Directed by Joel Anderson, 2008, 87 minutes
The Palmer family experiences supernatural disturbances after the loss of their daughter Alice (Talia Zucker). As the grieving family learns more about her emotional life, they must reassess their relationship with Alice and their assumptions about her death.
At first sight ‘Lake Mungo’ appears to be another supernatural drama disguised as a documentary. The pseudo-documentary (or ‘mockumentary’) is particularly well suited to telling ghost stories, but these films vary erratically in quality; even the most ardent ghost fan may have become jaded with too much wobbly camera and the sound of over-excited paranormal investigators scrabbling around in the dark. Leave these expectations behind when you watch ‘Lake Mungo’. Joel Anderson’s beautifully shot film is a moving and realistic portrayal of a family coping with bereavement that also delivers some sharp supernatural shocks.
‘Lake Mungo’s opening credits acknowledge the haunted history of photography and remind us that cameras have been used to document the supernatural since the nineteenth century. Cinematic pioneers like Georges Méliès and R. W. Paul used trick photography to conjure spectres and shock audiences, a technique that remains profitable for effects-led hits like ‘Poltergeist’ (Tobe Hooper, 1982) or ‘Crimson Peak’ (Guillermo Del Toro, 2015). ‘Lake Mungo’ chooses not to present the supernatural as spectacle and instead approaches the ghost story through the trauma of family tragedy and our relationship with technology. Like ‘Ring’ (Hideo Nakata, 1998) ‘Lake Mungo’ considers the haunted potential of photography and video whilst transposing the ghost stories of M. R. James for the digital age.
Images of the dead have long been part of remembrance and mourning: Coptic Egyptian mummies were decorated with disarmingly candid portraits of the deceased and although we have no sense of their resemblance to the original subject these ancient faces gaze at us as with all the immediacy of photography. Memorial portraiture is no longer the luxury of the wealthy and as mobile technology captures every element of our lives the faces of the dead no longer fade away into memory. Carefully posed selfies have replaced the tragic, blurred snapshots of victims that used to accompany news of murder or disaster. Meticulously constructed digital personae offer a sort of immortality and our increasingly intimate engagement with social media has the potential to make us all ghosts in the digital world. Like fairy changelings, the dead of Instagram and Facebook are neither fully alive nor dead, instead they exist in a space somewhere in between; ‘outside over there’. These digital revenants may comfort those who survive but they also deny us the mercy of forgetting, trapping us in a state of perpetual mourning. The haunting in ‘Lake Mungo’ begins equivocally: Alice’s nocturnal visits may be nightmares prompted by shock and grief but when the Palmers record photographic evidence of Alice’s continuing presence rational explanations fail and the family is unable to accept her death or move on with their lives. Alice remains close to her family, but she seems trapped within photographs and video, where, like one of J. M. Barrie’s lost boys, she will never grow old. This spectre is all the more desolate and forlorn because her family cannot communicate with it.
‘Lake Mungo’ is fascinated with the images that preserve our relationships. For the Palmers, like many others, the surface detail of domestic routine captured in photographs and video conceal a more complicated emotional existence. As viewers we only ever see Alice as a video or photographic image, and she remains unreadable. As details of Alice’s hidden life emerge, we notice that there is something uncomfortable in these family images: Gazes that do not meet; smiles that never quite connect. Alice often appears out of place, a ghost whilst still alive, alienated from those around her. Under scrutiny, family snaps and home video sometimes reveal the emotional distance between participants, awkwardness rather than spontaneity and this undermines their ability to reassure the bereaved, sowing doubt rather providing comfort.
‘Lake Mungo’s documentary style carefully unpeels the layers of complexity in family life as neighbours and relations present ambivalent views of the Palmer family. Domestic rituals, like leaving a porch light on in case Alice returns lend an air of authenticity, as do some subtle performances that help the audience forget that they are watching a drama. The Palmers do not conform to the genre stereotype of a nuclear family under supernatural assault; they are uncomfortable with showy emotionality and their reserve is both moving and realistic. Anderson suggests that sometimes ghosts fulfil an emotional need for those who see them. There are hints of tension between Alice and her mother June (Rosie Traynor), whose regret about her struggle to express affection for her daughter haunts the film. As we watch each member of Alice’s family react to her loss, we become aware that her father Russell (David Pledger) and her brother Mathew (Martin Sharp) also have their own unresolved issues. The film leaves us to decide if Alice is a revenant or a manifestation of the family’s grief, allowing us just enough room for rational explanations before it deploys its most frightening imagery.
The haunting in ‘Lake Mungo’ is close, claustrophobic, and unbearably intimate. Anderson excels at making the familiar frightening: Ominous interior shots make the narrow hallways and bedrooms of the Palmer’s small, modern bungalow seem more threatening than a gothic mansion. We expect to see Alice around every corner or unexpectedly find her sitting in her tidy bedroom checking her texts. Odd details unsettle the viewer like the family car driving home in reverse after Alice’s disappearance. In death, Alice is both melancholic and terrifying: Her parents’ calm description of her visitations proves more disturbing than any stage ghost or optical effect. Alice’s ghost is more frightening because of its emotional connection to those it haunts. We are denied any comforting tales of murder or villainy; there is no Hugh Crain, Emeric Belasco or Overlook Hotel feeding on fear or marshalling an army of hungry ghosts, just a simple family home. This haunting is not a localised phenomenon; a ‘bad house’ that we can flee or destroy. Instead, Anderson uses the Australian settings to generate a more pervading sense of unease; there is a stillness and menace to the landscapes, as if they are waiting to pounce. John Brawley’s cinematography combines beautifully framed compositions with time-lapse images of southern skies to recall the early films of Peter Weir or ‘Long Weekend’ (Colin Eggleston,1977) which depict Australia as an inscrutable and inhospitable continent, inimical to human life but imbued with a rich secret history. In contrast human spaces like the Palmer’s home city of Ararat appear inconsequential, cowed by the landscape that surrounds them. Lake Mungo itself is an ancient and desolate location, almost lunar, a place of Pleistocene burials and magnetic anomalies. The Palmer’s journey there provides no sense of closure: in common with other great creators of the ghost story Anderson understands that the less we know the more there is to fear and offers minimal exposition; whatever forces harried Alice to her death remain unexplained. There is only the ineluctable logic of mortality: Death comes for us all; it does not care who we are, what we have done or how much we will be missed.
Most cinematic ghost stories fail to scare, some manage to set up a compelling scenario only to founder in melodramatic cliché or crass spectacle. ‘Lake Mungo’ is a short and sombre film; the slow pace and mundane setting may put off viewers who want a thrilling Friday night shocker but Anderson succeeds where so many others fail to create a terrifying modern haunting that remains lodged in the memory long after the credits have faded.
Quotes
“I feel like something bad is going to happen to me, I feel like something bad has happened, it hasn’t reached me yet but it’s on its way” Alice Palmer (Talia Zucker)
“Alice would come down the hall still dripping from the dam and just stand at the foot of our bed just staring at us.” June Palmer (Rosie Traynor)
Connections.
Film
‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ directed by Peter Weir (1975)
‘Long Weekend’ directed by Colin Eggleston (1977)
‘The Last Wave’ directed by Peter Weir (1977)
‘Ring’ directed by Hideo Nakata (1998)
‘The Others’ directed by Alejandro Amenábar (2001)
‘Death of a Ghost Hunter’ directed by Sean Tretta (2007)
Television
‘The Stone Tape’ directed by Peter Sasdy, written by Nigel Kneale, BBC, 1972
‘Ghostwatch’ directed by Lesley Manning, written by Stephen Volk, BBC, 1992
Reading
M.R. James, Collected Ghost Stories of M.R James, Edward Arnold, 1931
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House, Viking, 1959
Peter Moss, Ghosts Over Britain: True Accounts of Modern Hauntings, David and Charles, 1977
Maurice Sendak, Outside Over There, Lothrop Lee and Shepard, 1981
Chloe Hooper, A Child’s book of True Crime, Vintage, 2002
Marina Warner, Phantasmagoria, Oxford, 2006
Koji Suzuki, Ringu, Harper, 2007
Web
This site has good images of the Fayum mummy portraits and some excellent contextual information:
simplysourdust 
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