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In cinemas now [M]
Director: Joel Anderson
Run Time: 87 mins
Lake Mungo is a new Australian feature, combining two well-worn genres, the ghost story and the “mockumentary”. However, it blends these elements so skilfully, that it still manages to provide a melancholic, haunting and (most importantly) entertaining movie-going experience. The film’s documentary style has actors speaking to camera about their characters’ experiences as a combination of eerie music and striking visuals tell this quietly disturbing tale.
Set in the aftermath of 16-year-old Alison Palmer’s (Talia Zucker) tragic drowning, Lake Mungo tells the story of how the surviving family members, mother June (Rosie Traynor), father Russell (David Pledger) and son Mathew (Martin Sharpe) deal not only with their traumatic loss, but also the unsettling fact that their home is now haunted with Alison’s ghost. To find answers, they seek the assistance of psychic Ray Kemeny (Steve Jodrell), while aspiring photographer Mathew continues to capture his late sister’s image in dimly lit photographs and video cameras set up throughout the house.
The effect of the ghost on the Palmer family is rendered more personal and traumatic in Lake Mungo than in most films about hauntings – their response to Alice’s ghost is not Hollywood histrionics, rather a personal anguish not dissimilar to the astronauts’ responses to apparitions in Tarkovsky’s Solaris. The darkened corridors and creeping sense of unease have a touch of David Lynch about them (is it an accident the main protagonists’ surname is Palmer?), and like tragic Twin Peaks heroine Laura Palmer, there’s more to Alison than their family have been led to believe.
Lake Mungo’s combination of two established genres works so well, because of the emotional element they provide the film. On one hand, it’s done in documentary-style, so there’s an objectivity, an emotional distance, to the storytelling. Yet, the film is simultaneously one of the more emotive ghost stories, because of the impact of not only Alison’s ghost on her family, but the sheer raw grief they are going through as well.
It’s visually amazing, combining Super 8 and even mobile phone footage with stunning full colour cinematography (the man behind the lens is the talented John Brawley), while the combination of sound, music and excellent, naturalistic acting makes Lake Mungo more of an eerie creeper than an outright scarefest.
Some may be frustrated at the film’s deliberate pace, while others may roll their eyes at a couple of the plot developments, but writer/director Joel Anderson ultimately manages to provide an unsettling plausibility to this superbly crafted slice of Australian gothic.
Bring on more Oz genre flicks!
****
MATT THROWER
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