REVIEW: Lake Mungo (Joel Anderson, 2008)

The Palmers, once a family of four, are now only three.  Daughter Alice (Talia Zucker) drowned in a river.  They suffer, they grieve, and they try to move on.  Then they notice odd things in photographs taken after her death.  Director Joel Anderson's camera holds firmly on the pictures, allowing the viewer to search the frame for anything out of place.  Something distant?  In the shadows?  Then slow zooms reveal the aberrations, moving so close that the images near abstraction.  There's something unsettling about seeing a tiny pallid face in a corner, but imagine that image getting larger and larger, until the resolution's so low that the pixels holding the ghostly face shift and weave and threaten to pull apart.

That's when the gooseflesh arrives in Lake Mungo.  Director Joel Anderson presents the story in a documentary format, but don't take the film as another "found footage" feature in the vein of Cloverfield and Rec.  Instead, Lake Mungo presents its fictional story in traditional documentary clothing.  The presentation evokes classic TV show Unsolved Mysteries, where participants readily took part in re-enactments of their supernal experiences.  To that reliable approach (augmented with lovely, steady transition shots of the Australian environment), Anderson adds a mixed-media emphasis, with creepy clues found in video surveillance, photographs, "talking head" testimonials, VHS tapes, and a bonus cell phone recording that offers the best scare of its kind since Sadako crawled out of the well in Ringu.

This style suggests that, the more evidence we gather, the more complex the truth becomes.  The initial "ghost story" simplicity of the film complicates with the arrival of new footage from previously-unseen witnesses, who have reason to be suspicious of the Palmers' conclusions.  What they've seen leads to a new revision of the story, but one that doesn't fit perfectly.  Inconsistencies remain.  The family goes to a psychic (Steve Jobrell) for guidance, but they don't know that he's met Alice before.  Naturally, he has a tape of his own to share, and his evidence shifts the film in yet another direction.  As the story turns, what actually happened becomes more and more difficult to pin down, the truth as elusive as the ghost of Alice.

Despite these complications, the movie never loses focus, because we're always learning more about Alice.  From her family, from her friends, from the images she left behind.  Some of them hint at a depression prior to her drowning.  Others hint at a scandalous relationship.  Talia Zucker creates a full performance in her limited screen-time, varying from youthful cheer to melancholy to horror.  As we learn about Alice, we learn about her family.  Her brother Matthew (Martin Sharpe) responds to her death by retreating into open-ended art projects.  Parents June (Rosie Traynor) and Russell (David Pledger) offer the casual mutual support that strong marriages require.  This family dynamic, subtle and genuine, gives this film the a core of emotion lacking in a film like Paranormal Activity.

The lake in the title doesn't arrive until the movie's nearly over, and when the Palmers visit, there's no surprise in learning that Lake Mungo is a dry lake.  Appropriate that a movie about ghosts hinges on a location that's literally a specter of its former self.  The stark sand and rock call up unavoidable associations with Picnic at Hanging Rock, and Joel Anderson is bold to create a film that shares so many similarities with Peter Weir's esteemed mood-piece.  However, Lake Mungo stands on its own, especially in its final minutes, as we learn what might be the solution to Alice, her death, and her possible resurrection.  It's a solution that does not disappoint.  There's a grace to the answers, and a grace to the entire film, which gives even its blurriest footage a curious beauty and mystery.  This is a creepy, poignant, and memorable horror movie.

RATING: A-