Great horror film
- Lake Mungo review by TH
This is one of those horror films that hits different.
It's filmed just like a true life documentary and convinces throughout.
The performances are spot on and while it's a slow burner it leads to some chilling set pieces with the grainy camera.
The scary thing is that keeps close to what is scary and that's human emotions and fear of the future.
Much like The Others and The Orphanage this is a horror movie that avoids jump scares and relies on chilling imagery and a sad premise.
Great work
3 out of 3 members found this review helpful.
Creepy and affecting
- Lake Mungo review by TDM
Lo-fi, a little abstract, and all the better for it.
This is an excellently constructed and written film, with excellent acting, that you'll wonder how you missed before.
Well worth a watch, you might very well be surprised.
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
Excellent - chilling and absorbing
- Lake Mungo review by CD
A really superbly put together chiller documentary. The documentary format works really well and quite apart from the ghost photography which keeps the suspense level up, the gradual revealing of the family context and pressures add considerably to the credibility and sadness of the film. The plot resolves itself into quite a scary conclusion. I watched the film in two sittings and it prompted a lot of thoughts, some unsettling. It certainly makes you think twice about potential impacts of the supernatural.
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
Good start but the implausibilities sink it
- Lake Mungo review by AER
This Australian ghost story adopts the 'true-story' documentary format which works well initially but as time goes on the framing device betrays some unconvincing twists in the narrative. The faux-documentary device keeps the film inhabitants at arm's length and when the unconvincing twist turns up at the half-way mark it's too late to trust anyone. The performances are uniformly good but anybody that's seen enough talking heads documentaries will catch these guys acting here and there.
All things considered, the story is very good and hasn't been done before. It's very creepy in parts but the post-credit sequences are plain stupid and make the characters look like a bunch of idiots - and sadly the parting shots cheapen the exercise. It's definitely worth a look, as some aspects are chilling but its narrative was inconsistent at times and ultimately, this rendered the film unconvincing which is a shame because the makers were clearly striving for authenticity.
5 out of 10
0 out of 1 members found this review helpful.