Delayed Reaction: Lake Mungo

Premise: A "documentary" about the strange things happening to a family after the death of their daughter.

There are episodes of Unsolved Mysteries that have shaken me to my core more than most horror movies ever have. It doesn't seem like that should be possible. That show was just interviews and maybe a couple videos or pictures with some unexplained phenomena. Surely, movies designed to scare people, that have killer clowns jumping out from under the bed should frighten me more. I think it comes down to the feeling of unfinished business. I'm unsettled when I come out of something where the world no longer makes sense. That's much of the reason why I'm drawn to found footage. It's hard to have closure when the person holding the camera is also being chased. Normally, the footage just ends and I'm left to guess what happened.

In many ways, Lake Mungo is a theatrical cut of an Unsolved Mysteries episode. It's about a family getting over the death of their daughter/sister and running into unexplained occurrences after her death. It's a movie about wanting closure and not getting it. It doesn't rely on special effects. It's almost entirely talking heads. Just people telling us about spooky stuff that happened. The fake footage is almost all of mundane stuff with eerie images caught in the back of the frame. There's nothing I couldn't do with a nice camera and a little know-how. But the way it's presented is really effective. I'd be remiss to ignore the significance of the haunting but understated score throughout the film. It's great music that doesn't call attention to itself.

The end is what will stick with me, because it's a bravado move. The reason twists are hard in movies is because misdirection is more difficult with an audience watching a screen. A filmmaker, if they are playing fairly, must put the evidence on the screen and hope that the audience it's looking for it. In Lake Mungo's case, it had to hide Alice sightings and just hope the audience wouldn't notice. I'm not going back to inspect, but I'll assume the filmmakers played fair and didn't change up the pictures at the end to include the hidden Alices. Assuming that's true, then they completely succeeded. I didn't catch any of those Alice sightings originally. Revealing them at the end then made me wonder what else I could've missed. And that's how you break my brain. Congrats Lake Mungo.

I guess my only complaint about the movie is that I'm still confused about the why of a lot of it. Like, the whole business with the neighbors who had sex with Alice. It was a nifty reveal and all. I like what it says about never really knowing someone. I don't fully get the need for it though. In general, I don't understand why Alice was haunting the family. Did she have unfinished business? I don't think I would've liked hard answers, but perhaps I would've appreciated some more convincing theories. I just wanted the filmmakers to show their hand a little more than they did. Overall though, it's a small gripe, and I understand if they didn't want to risk oversharing.

Verdict: Strongly Recommend