Lake Mungo Standard Edition Blu-ray Review

4 star goose-bump inducing Australian horror chiller.

Lake Mungo is an Australian psychological horror film originally released in 2008. It is written and directed by Joel Anderson and remains to this day his only feature film. It’s as if he emerged to produce one magnificent film and then disappeared back into the shadows along with his characters.

Filmed on a low budget, Lake Mungo is a documentary style film, featuring interviews as well as some found footage and news report elements.

Following on from the Limited Edition release, Lake Mungo is now available on Standard Edition Blu-ray courtesy of Second Sight Films.

“I feel like something bad is going to happen to me. I feel like something bad has happened. It hasn’t reached me yet, but it’s on it’s way.”

The small Victorian town of Ararat has been rocked by the death of 16 year old Alice Palmer (Talia Zucker) during a family picnic.

She was swimming at the local dam with her brother Mathew (Martin Sharpe – Scooter: Secret Agent) when he got out and they discovered that she was nowhere to be seen.

A massive search is launched and sadly a body is found. Badly decomposed, she is identified by her father Russell (David Pledger – One Night Stand) while her mother June (Rosie Traynor – Cut Snake) remains in the car unable to see her daughter that way.

“Alice kept secrets. She kept the fact that she kept secrets a secret.”

Not long after the funeral, the family begin to notice some strange goings on in their house. They hear unexplained noises coming from Alice’s room and in the roof. At the same time, June suffers from nightmares, wandering the streets at night and even going into other people’s houses.

Mathew reveals a photograph he has taken of the back yard, with some disturbing results, images appearing to show Alice. Doubting the body found was her daughter, June insists the body be exhumed for DNA testing. Not getting the results she was hoping for, she turns to renowned psychic Ray Kemeney (Steve Jodrell – Wentworth).

As the family try to reconcile their grief with the strange events unfolding, their investigations lead them to the realization that they never really knew their daughter at all.

Lake Mungo is a fantastic film, beautifully written and very well put together. There was no script, rather the actors (all of whom were unknown at the time) were given a narrative and asked to ad lib the reactions of their character. This lends an enormously natural feel to the whole thing.

It is superbly unsettling and packed with twists and turns, all leading to the terrible and inevitable conclusion. It also serves as a look at the effect of grief, both on individuals and on the family dynamic. Genuinely scary and unexpectedly moving, this is a great watch and well worth adding to your collection.

“Death takes everything eventually. It’s the meanest, dumbest machine there is and it just keeps coming and it doesn’t care.”