Found
footage horror will likely always be on the lower end of hardcore horror
filmgoer’s totem pole. Though beginning
infamously with Cannibal Holocaust it
was after micro-budget fare such as The
Blair Witch Project and Paranormal
Activity became commercial successes against mixed critical reception that
the subgenre quickly developed into a low budget moneymaking machine with
quality control often thrown out the window.
Some are strong like the Spanish freak out [*REC] while others such as Paranormal
Activity: The Ghost Dimension sadly scrape the bottom of the barrel.
Which
brings us to Lake Mungo, a faux
documentary/found-footage film which may
take the top spot as one of the scariest and bleakest ever made. The one and only feature from Australian writer-director
Joel Anderson, the film begins as an eerie slow burn concerning a young girl
named Alice Palmer (Talia Zucker) who drowns while swimming with her family in
Ararat, Australia. Survived by her
grieving parents and brother, her family at home soon begins to experience
poltergeist activity and the appearance of apparitions caught on their video
camera. Further examination of the
video, however, reveals a disturbing secret about their late daughter Alice with
one of the spookiest scares ever put into a found footage film at the end of
it. So chilling and uncanny is this coup
de grace it will likely cause you to lose sleep at night.
Partially
a ghost story and deeply sad tale of a lost soul on her way towards her demise,
the film is one of the rare few emotionally engaging found footage films. Tinged with grief and sadness, as the film
picks up momentum and the chess pieces slowly come into play the scares
resonate more due to our own collective emotional connection to the film’s
deeply troubled dead protagonist. Amid
the footage coming from a variety of sources of varying quality ala Noroi the Curse are subtle reenactments
of ominous dark rainy nights near the scene of Alice Palmer’s death, including
a silhouetted figure which only reveals their shadow while leaving the rest of
our fears up to imagination.
The
film sports very strong, realistic performances by Rosie Traynor, David Pledger
and Martin Sharpe as Alice’s surviving family members whose grief onscreen
comes across as authentic. Found footage
films are rarely if ever characterized by the acting abilities of the cast
members which makes Lake Mungo something
of a minor revelation. You feel these
characters’ pain and sense of loss and the somber mood is never shaken by the
occasional but effectively punctuating scares ahead. Compounded with a brooding and occasionally
terrifying score by Dai Peterson, Lake
Mungo is a gloomy place to be whose downbeat mood only intensifies the
horror elements.
Released
in Australia as a minor success before being picked up by Lionsgate’s After Dark Films label a year later, Lake Mungo flew under the radar in an
oversaturated marketplace flooded with many vastly inferior found footage
counterparts. A shame this one remains
clandestine as it packs a brutally frightening punch that’s emotionally
devastating and among the most wholly original permutations of the archetypical
ghost story. Like a nightmare you want
to start screaming in but can’t, Lake
Mungo is the scariest slice of brooding downbeat found footage horror
you’ve never heard of!
--Andrew Kotwicki
