MAY 14: Lake Mungo

            Somehow, this is my third found footage movie in 8 days, a subgenre I’m completely neutral on. As you may have gathered from my reviews, the last two were good trashy fun. And that’s great – I love a little trashy fun. But I had to wonder – is that all found footage flicks are good for, a little shaky cam, some gross stuff, a few good jumps? So many of the big famous found footage movies, like Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity, left me cold because they stopped at the spooky, relied on high-concept buzzy marketing and sheer novelty, and just felt kinda slight. They were made to scare, and they didn’t scare me, so what was the point? So I was surprised by Lake Mungo which, though found footage, is a completely different beast.

            Lake Mungo, a little film out of Australia, which produces more horror movies than you may realize, follows the family of 16-year-old Alice Palmer after her sudden death by drowning during a family picnic. As they struggle to come to terms with Alice’s death, her family begins experiencing strange paranormal happenings while images of Alice start turning up in photographs and security footage. Dad’s a skeptic, mom’s a believer, but neither is ready to let their daughter go. The sightings lead them to uncover their daughter’s secrets and learn of her troubled months before her death.

            Unlike the usual found footage flick, this isn’t filmed as it happens but rather in a mockumentary style after the fact. It’s extremely minimalist, composed of talking head interviews as the family and their friends and neighbors look back on the strange events, interspersed with home videos, news coverage, and the blurry sightings of Alice. As such, it creates an illusion of verisimilitude that’s way more compelling then the average found footage flick. It’s a story told with careful restraint and a spirit of creeping dread. It won’t make you jump – well, maybe once or twice – but it will draw you in.

 A blurry seance; one of the film's understated setpieces

            In my review of Don’t Look Now, I rattled off a whole list of recent films which, like that ‘70s classic, took on grief as their subject matter. Lake Mungo is reminiscent of these films, but a lot quieter. The remove of having the characters tell the story to a camera, with the distance of hindsight, doesn’t dull the grief they experience but changes its pitch, less the immediate howls of pain in, say, Hereditary, and more a wistful looking back at an ache that will never quite go away, but has lessened some. That’s not better or worse than its contemporary cycle of grief films, but it is different, and why I felt like I was watching something brand new that nonetheless covered familiar territory. Unlike the characters in an Ari Aster film and more like the characters in another Australian film, The Babadook, the characters in Lake Mungo are not held back or destroyed by their grief. Rather, they find a way to move on and incorporate the specter of Alice, real or imagined, into their everyday lives. It’s a hopeful film, though a deeply sad one.

            It’s a careful balance, melancholy that never spirals into despair, and one that horror films rarely nail. That’s the territory of the quiet drama, not of horror. But of course, there’s space in horror for a whole range of emotions, and I love how artfully Lake Mungo captures big emotion in a minimalist frame. Like The Fog, it feels a bit like a dusty ghost story, literary and familiar, though it’s far more character-driven than Carpenter’s ghost story. Not all horror films need to use their spooks in the service of character and feeling – I certainly enjoy spooks for spooks sakes – but when a film does it well, and Lake Mungo does it very well, it’s something special.

The Palmer family 

Vibecheck: An unexpectedly moving History Channel documentary on the paranormal, watched late at night.

Scare Factor: Lake Mungo saves its one big spook till about twenty minutes before movie’s end, and the rest it filled with a sense of dread and melancholy. It’s not a relentless film by any means, but it is likely to stick with you.

Pairs Well With: Its occult vibes and understated ghosties are reminiscent of Personal Shopper, an eerie little French film starring a very excellent Kristin Stewart. And as a meditation on the inevitability of death, it recalls an earlier film from this lineup, Don’t Look Now, as well as one of my fave recent horror films, It Follows.

But how gay is it?: Alice’s sexuality remains one of the film’s question marks, though she is dating a hunk who is not terribly interesting, and is not in the film for very long. Goodbye, hunk!

Girlfriend’s Corner: This one just seems sort of sad! I am tired and so will not be terribly articulate in this Girlfriend’s Corner, dear readers, but I would like to remind you that I prefer movies that are sad in a yearning way, not a grief way. Anyway, I would like to watch Personal Shopper, because Kristin Stewart is very pretty. She sure turned out better than Robert Pattinson! Did you hear about his pasta recipe? I’ve considered making it a few times, but I never have hamburger buns or a giant novelty lighter sitting around.