LAKE MUNGO
Scariest Oz horror since Crocodile Dundee In LA.
FILM EXTRAS 2008 OUT NOW BD EXTRAS Commentaries, Interviews, Video essays, Deleted scenes, Art cards, Booklet
Ask 10 genre aficionados what is the best-kept secret of postmillennial horror and eight of them will say Lake Mungo, a small fake-doc offering from Australia that mixes Paranormal Activity with Making A Murderer. Self-distributed in Oz and slipping quietly onto DVD elsewhere, it caused barely a ripple. Writer/director Joel Anderson has not made a film since, disappearing from public view. Nowhere to be found in the Blu’s deep-dive extras, his absence only adds to the film’s mythology.
And what a film. Anderson brings an unwavering authenticity to this examination of the disappearance of 16-year-old Alice Palmer (Talia Zucker), thought to have drowned while swimming at a dam. Over the next seven months, the film crew repeatedly interview Alice’s mum (Rosie Traynor), dad (David Pledger) and brother (Martin Sharpe), plus a psychic (Steve Jodrell) and various locals of the town of Ararat. What emerges is a genuinely chilling ghost story and a profound portrait of
loneliness. Alice’s story is as affecting as that of her touchstone namesake Laura in Twin Peaks.
A commentary by Aussie author Alexandra Heller-Nicholas digs into the themes of technology, memory and Australia’s colonial past, while filmmakers such as Rob Savage (Host) and Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (Spring, Synchronic) wax lyrical. “I was absolutely terrified,” shudders Savage. “But it stuck with me beyond being a scary movie.” Absolutely. Jamie Graham