Lake Mungo, 2008.
Directed by Joel Anderson.
Starring Talia Zucker, Rosie Traynor, David Pledger, Martin Sharpe, Steve Jodrell, Tamara Donnellan and Scott Terrill.
SYNOPSIS:
Following the death of their daughter, a family begin to experience strange and inexplicable events around their home that lead them to suspect they are being haunted by her spirit.
Australian genre flicks have been pretty popular since the release of Wolf Creek a few years back and with recent ‘found footage’ / ‘mockumentary’ hits such as Paranormal Activity, The Fourth Kind and The Last Exorcism, it probably doesn’t come as much surprise to see Aussie writer-director Joel Anderson’s 2008 debut feature Lake Mungo finally arriving here on UK shores. Although it’s marketed as a ‘supernatural thriller’ in the vein of the aforementioned Paranormal Activity and – yep, you’ve guessed it – The Blair Witch Project, Lake Mungo isn’t really your standard shocker, with the ghost story elements taking a back seat in favour of a compelling drama about a family struggling to come to terms with the loss of a loved one.
Starting out very much as a traditional ‘talking heads’ documentary, Lake Mungo begins by detailing the events leading up to the accidental drowning of sixteen-year-old Alice Palmer (Talia Zucker), told through the eyes of those closest to her – father Russell (David Pledger), mother June (Rosie Traynor) and brother Mathew (Martin Sharpe). After a series of unexplained events, the family come to suspect that Alice’s spirit is haunting them and they call upon the services of a psychic, Ray Kemeny (Steve Jodrell), to help them investigate. However, rather than getting to the bottom of the supernatural activity, they uncover the dark secrets of Alice’s life and set out to unravel the mysterious events leading up to her death.
Joel Anderson does a good job of constructing his narrative, blending all the typical documentary elements such as interviews, news footage, home videos, photographs and mobile phone footage to present a riveting tale steeped in authenticity. Watching Lake Mungo, it would be easy to mistake the film for a real documentary, which is helped immeasurably by the improvised performances of its cast of unknowns (well, outside of Neighbours, I imagine). The majority of actors come off as entirely believable, with David Pledger providing the stand-out turn as Alice’s father and his on-screen son Martin Sharpe coming a close second.
As I said near the start of this review, Lake Mungo isn’t the kind of film that will have you jumping out of your seat every couple of minutes and it certainly doesn’t pack the same kind of punch as Paranormal Activity in terms of frights. Instead, Anderson takes his time to pull the audience in, delivering an atmospheric and engrossing slow-burner with a number of genuinely chilling moments thrown in for good measure.
On a final note, an American remake of Lake Mungo is currently in development and expected to arrive later this year. Now, I can appreciate that some people don’t like to read subtitles so there’s always going to be a place for English language remakes (The Ring, The Grudge, Dark Water, Mirrors, just about every other Asian horror out there, etc.), but do we really need to see another version when said film is already in English? Can things really be that desperate?
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