Lake Mungo Movie Review 97

 

Lake Mungo is a little known movie which I came across and decided to watch. It is an Australian movie and it is made in a documentary style. I wondered if it would be like Paranormal Activity but it wasn't really except that it was shot as a documentary. The comparison ends there. It is directed by Joel Anderson and it doesn't star anyone you would recognise.

The story begins in December 2005 and we find out that there was some kind of accident. We hear the emergency call and find out that it is in Ararat, Australia. A sixteen year old girl called Alice Walker(Talia Zucker) has went missing in the water and her family can't find her. The cops go looking for her and everybody wondered what happened. On the 24th December 2005, they find the body and she is laid to rest. Ten days after her funeral, strange things begin to happen. Her mother,June(Rosie Traynor) is having nightmares. She goes for walks at night as she doesn't want to fall asleep. Her dad,Russell(David Pledger) sees Alice when he goes into her room one night. Alice's brother, Matthew(Martin Sharpe) has bruises all over his body that can't be explained.

Matthew has taken a picture of the backyard and Alice is in it.Other people have taken pictures too and the figure of Alice is in them too. June thinks that her daughter is still alive. The family want to dig up the body and get a DNA test.It turns out that Alice IS dead. She is reburied. Matthew sets up video cameras in the house so that they can see if Alice turns up at night when they are all asleep. A figure is seen on the camera the next day.Some couple who are on holiday see her in their video too.We discover that it was Matthew who was making it all up himself. He doctored the pictures of the backyard so it would look as if Alice was there. It comes out that Alice had some problem with her neighbour and that she was very unhappy about it. She had been afraid to tell her parents that he was abusing her and when she went on a trip to Lake Mungo, she hid her mobile phone and other things. She saw something when she was at Lake Mungo and it frightened her. The parents go there and find her belongings.It turns out that she saw her own death. The family decide to move on and sell the house.They don't realise that Alice WAS in those pictures and that they missed it. She was also in the house but they did not see her. They leave her in the house while they go to a new life...

This movie was just about watchable. It wasn't great and I think that the documentary thing made it a bit slower as not much happened. It gets a paltry 3/10.