Writer's Block Review: "Lake Mungo" (2012)

              To help me break with some writer’s block I have been suffering from since the large amount of writing I did for my finals in the middle of May, I am going back to basics.  You might be saying, “you haven’t updated this blog in months.”  To which I must replay, “yeah, I had other shit going on.” 

             A large amount of this blog is just me writing about movies I have seen.  For a time I would rank/review all the movies I had seen from a given year.  I stopped emphasizing movies for whatever reason and now my brain is tired from thinking bigger thoughts about the world and suffering and how people in power know exactly how to fix it all, but they don’t.

             Today I am going to write on here something simple, much like how I started simple when I went back to the gym following Covid.

 Lake Mungo (2012)

Written and Directed by Joel Anderson (who is known for this and that is it)

Currently available on Tubi.

 

The Premise

             This is a fictional-Documentary about the events surrounding the death of a young woman and the subsequent haunting of her family by that young woman.

 

The Good

             I found out after the fact that the actors adlibbed most of their dialogue.  The idea being that they would sit down, be told what the idea of the scene was, and just to act it all out.  This strategy sounds like it would be a fucking disaster but turned out quite well.  The reason I found out about this is simply because I found the acting strong enough that I was intrigued with the behind the scenes.

             The haunting material is solid.  The idea of someone appearing in footage or in pictures is a classic “Ghost” thing in folklore/media and it is presented well almost every time (there are some instances in which the ghost is supposed to go unnoticed till a reveal and you are left going, “I saw that earlier”).

             The mysteries and secrets that get revealed are intriguing and spooky in equal measure.

 

The Bad

             Um… I mean, I already mentioned the few instances in which you will see the ghost before they intend you to.  It happens.

             It is a little slow and I think the most interesting bits could fit into a 60 minute format, but compared to the bloated nightmare that is modern true crime documentaries on streaming where 1-2 hours of content is spread over 4-12 because god forbid they cut the fluff… “Lake Mungo” is tight as a drum by comparison.

             I guess the only “complaint” I have is that it is far more sad than scary.  It is perhaps the nature of ghost stories that “grief was the real ghost the whole time”, but this one especially.

 

Conclusion

             “Lake Mungo" is a good, sad, short little ghost story.  It is worth watching.

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