Candygram for Mungo?

A while back, I wrote about one of the films screened in the annual After Dark Horrorfest. Last year, somewhat inexplicably, Denver didn't host any screenings. This was much to the chagrin of my two most horror-loving friends, who thus didn't get to continue their yearly tradition. But it wasn't going to stop them from seeing the films for long. Now that they're coming available on DVD, they've been checking them out whenever they can. One in particular, they decided to recommend to me.

It's called Lake Mungo. It's an Australian film, presented as a documentary about a family whose 16-year old daughter is killed in accident just days before Christmas. In the months that follow, the family begins to capture ghostly apparitions of the girl on film and video, which in turn leads them to shocking realizations about the final months of her life.

I found myself of a really divided opinion on the film. On the one hand, the documentary presentation of this movie is extraordinarily well realized. I didn't really know what I was going to watch as I began the movie -- I had only the "it's good; see it" recommendation, with no further information on the content of the movie.

I was at first sure this was a fake documentary, but I must confess that after a little while, I suddenly wasn't sure. The acting was incredibly real, the way in which everything was shot was perfect for the style. It's far better done than the recent sensation, Paranormal Activity. It took me back a decade to when I first heard about The Blair Witch Project, months before it was actually released, when it was being marketed as actual found footage, and when you'd watch the couple of scenes that were available online... well, I found myself wondering. I was over a half hour into Lake Mungo before I finally made it back over the fence and knew I was watching something staged. But still, it remained thoroughly credible.

But then, the problem with the documentary style is that it controls how the story can be told. The conceits of The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity made it so that we could actually see the moments of most critical suspense and dramatic importance. Here in Lake Mungo, while some contrivances allow for a few moments like that, many moments are simply talked about after the fact. Oh, they're dressed up with great still photos and creepy music, just like a real documentary would do... but there's still a certain remove that keeps anything from ever being deeply scary.

But then again... I can't deny that there are some truly unsettling, creepy moments in this movie. There were moments that definitely made my skin crawl, and as I think about them now as I type this, I'm getting goosebumps just a bit. There's a simplicity that makes things more effective here.

But then again... er, again... the film has a rather unsatisfying conclusion in my mind. I'm not sure what exactly I thought things were building toward, but some of the "interviewees" in the first act were setting up "just how horrible things were gonna get," or what "those poor people were going through." And that's the thing about The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. Maybe they get to you, maybe they don't, but both movies do if nothing else have punchy, dramatic endings. With Lake Mungo, one moment I felt like we were still accelerating toward some big reveal at the end...

...and then it just was the end. It wasn't that the movie didn't have a good conclusion -- it felt like it didn't have any conclusion. It's as though the writer, not knowing what to do with the next page, just decided not to have a next page.

So I really wasn't sure how to rank this one. Very moody, very well directed, very effective at times, very credibly acted... but also very limited by the documentary style it apes so well, and very incomplete. I took a glance at some other suspense movies I've liked and played the "well, I liked it better than that I guess" game for a while, and where I finally stopped, I ended up at a B-. But it's the sort of B- that might be a B+ an hour from now, and a C- an hour after that. If that makes any sense.

What it probably means is that if you like horror/suspense movies, particularly the two I've referenced repeatedly here, then you probably will want to check this out for yourself and draw your own conclusion.