Lake Mungo

SPOILERS AHEAD

Let’s talk about Lake Mongo. This is a movie that made the rounds a few years ago, and lots of people who are into horror films were talking about it around 10 years after it came out. People seem to really enjoy this movie, and I just cannot get into it.

I watched it for the first time a couple years ago, right around the time people were talking about it. I recently re-watched it and I have some thoughts.

The movie is a mocumentary following a family a year after the tragic death of their daughter/sister. It is well acted and none of these people seem like actors. It could just as well be a true crime documentary for huge parts of the film. That part is really well done. It’s when they start getting into the supernatural element of it that if falls apart for me.

Of course, if you’re going to introduce a ghost, you have to have it be a fake-out at least once, right? They double down on that a few times. Which I find a little bit grating, and that’s part of the distaste for it.

I think the thing that really rubs me the wrong way is that essentially the scary part of the movie, apart from the one jump scare, is slowly zooming into photos. I just don’t find that that scary. Maybe I’ve seen too many Creepypastas.

That’s a weird image, but I don’t find it particularly scary. I’m sorry. I think the presence of an image with something you didn’t expect to see in it, like hiding there, I think that’s an interesting idea. I just don’t know if that sort of thing translates into a movie very well.

I mean, obviously that does work for some people, though, which is interesting. But I can’t get out of my cynical head that’s going, enhance, enhance.

I don’t like that they include a bit of a sex tape. In this film, a sex tape with someone who is, in the movie at least, 17 years old. That doesn’t seem like a necessary inclusion. Although I guess 16 or 17, depending on the territory, is the age of consent in Australia (where the film was made).

I think the pacing is perfect for what it is. A mocumentary where the acting is good and there’s a paranormal element. That part is perfect. I just don’t think it’s scary. And if you want me to be impressed with your submission to the Something Awful forums, I think I’d rather do something else, movie-wise, you know?

The cinematography is good. I think the fake-outs feel especially cheap to me. I feel like there’s got to be another way to have that happen. Just off the top of my head, the son had his girlfriend spend the night afterwards, and not that they look the same, but they both have brown hair. The parents didn’t even know that he had a girlfriend or whatever. I don’t know. This is a bad example. But, I think it feels less cheap to me than he’s doing it because he thinks it would help.

He has at an art project where he thinks he’s going to insert her into photos and not realize she’s already in them. I have a hard time believing that. There is a photo that you’ve doctored, you spent the time doctoring this photo, but you didn’t notice there was somebody extra in that photo.

It seems unnecessary. There’s really a ghost. What is the point? If there’s really a ghost, what is the point of the fake-out?

It’s movies like this that make me feel frustrated that there’s not just a slightly different approach to the same thing. But there’s just something there that’s missing for me.

I don’t like most jump scares but I think the jump scare part is actually great. It does this freeze on a thing and linger for a while a lot through out the movie. So you’re kind of primed for the hold on an image to happen and then for them to cut something completely different. So when they don’t and they betray that, that works. It’s not a cliche hand on the shoulder thing. It’s just this still image and then the footage keeps going. Now, was it a pause and play or is that what happened? In-universe, that isn’t a freeze frame. They just stood there and stared at each other for a real long time, or for a considerable amount of time, and then it kept going. I think that’s an interesting approach.

My rewatch was alone in the dark at night and it just wasn’t creepy or scary.

This is day 32 of #100DaysToOffload.