Lake Mungo (film)

Lake Mungo is a 2008 Australian psychological horror film written and directed by Joel Anderson. Presented in the mockumentary format with elements of found footage and docufiction, it follows a family trying to come to terms with the loss of their daughter Alice (Talia Zucker) after she drowns and the potentially supernatural events they experience after it.

Lake Mungo premiered at the Sydney Film Festival on 18 June 2008, and was screened at the American South by Southwest film festival in March 2009.

Plot
While swimming with her family at a dam in Ararat, 16-year-old Alice drowns. Her older brother Mathew later sets up cameras around the family home to capture what appears to be footage of Alice's ghost. Mathew and his parents Russell and June consult self-proclaimed psychic Ray for insight on the apparent haunting, but he is unable to explain it; Mathew confesses he set up the "sightings" of Alice as he wanted the family to have a reason to exhume her, thus giving closure to June, who regrets refusing to see Alice's body before the funeral. One of his videos shows Alice's bedroom being searched by Brett, a neighbour for whom she had worked as a babysitter. After searching the bedroom, June finds a hidden videotape of Alice having a threesome with Brett and his wife Marissa.

Ray admits that Alice had met with him several months before her death and told him she was experiencing recurring dreams about drowning, being dead, and her mother being unable to see or help her. Alice's boyfriend Jason gives her family mobile phone footage of a school trip to Lake Mungo, which shows Alice burying something at the base of a tree. They travel to Lake Mungo, find the tree, and dig up her phone. Footage on the phone shows Alice walking along the shore and encountering a corpse-like version of herself with a bloated and disfigured face, appearing exactly as her body would later be found in the lake.

Feeling that Alice wanted them to know who she really was and what she had seen, the Palmers move out of their home, believing that the haunting has ended and that Alice's ghost has moved on. In a photograph of their last moments at the house, the cloudy figure of a young woman appears in a window, while the photographs that Mathew admitted to faking appear to show her in the background.

Production
Joel Anderson wrote the bulk of the screenplay in 2005, at a time when he was finding it difficult to acquire funding for a different screenplay which required a much larger budget. After discussions with some who would become collaborators on Lake Mungo, he decided to write a fictional documentary-style story that he could film on a low budget. When asked about his main inspiration for creating the script, he said, "I don't think it's a supernatural thriller. I think it's meant to be an exploration of grief." He also cited a curiosity as to how "technology is used to record people's lives and sort of tracks memories, and how technology mediates a lot of our experiences". Initial funding was attained through private investors, after which the production team approached the Australian government's film funding body Screen Australia and received further funding.

During casting, low-profile actors were sought in an effort to maintain an authentic documentary feel. The film was shot over a period of approximately five weeks using both film and video formats. The script featured only the outline of the story and no written dialogue, so the actors were tasked with improvising their scenes; Anderson also served as the offscreen interviewer in the film's interview scenes, though he opted to remain uncredited.

Release
Lake Mungo premiered at the Sydney Film Festival on 18 June 2008. In March 2009, it screened at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas. On 13 March, the film was shown at the Travelling Film Festival in Wagga Wagga. On 17 March, the film screened in England at the London Australian Film Festival. On 21 January 2010, the film was shown at the American After Dark Horrorfest, distributed by Lionsgate and After Dark Films.

Reception
On review aggregation Rotten Tomatoes, Lake Mungo has a 96% approval rating with an average rating of 7.70/10, based on reviews from 23 critics. The film was nominated for Best Horror Movie at the Fright Meter Awards in 2010.

Prior to the film's wide release, Russell Edwards of Variety called it an "ambitious, restrained, and well-mounted mockumentary" and praised its musical score, but critiqued its dim lighting and lack of scripted dialogue. Andrew L. Urban of Urban Cinefile wrote that "this superbly constructed and executed film gets everything right, to the smallest detail, as it draws us into the imagined scenario". Simon Miraudo of Quickflix called it "a mournful, dreamlike examination of the hole left in the heart of a family after a death" and awarded it 5/5 stars. Simon Foster of the Special Broadcasting Service declared it to be "one of the most impressive debut films from this country in many years" and further commented that "the young director has created a nerve-rattler unlike any film the Australian industry has produced".

Megan Lehmann of The Hollywood Reporter noted the film's "compelling slow build", "surreal atmospherics", and "restrained soundtrack that works on a primal level [and] cleaves close to reality". She also praised its fusion of supernatural elements with substantive themes on family and loss, concluding that "this ambitious exploration of death and its aftershocks will reward more discerning genre fans". Conversely, a review published by Bloody Disgusting concluded that "the ultimate problem with Lake Mungo is that the filmmakers had too many good ideas crammed into one film and not enough time to tell all their tales".

In 2020, Mike Sprague of Dread Central included the film on his list of 10 underrated horror films to watch on Amazon Prime during COVID-19 lockdowns. Later that year, Meagan Navarro of Bloody Disgusting went against the publication's initial negative review to write that "the scares come subtle, often lurking in the background for only the most observant to notice [...] [it's a] unique horror movie, a slow-burn mystery full of twists and one seriously unnerving jump scare for the ages".