Diving into ‘Lake Mungo’ and Its Sad Ghost Story 17 Years Later

Unlike the average offering of found-footage filmmaking, Joel Anderson’s debut Lake Mungo limits the amateur aesthetic now deemed a signature of this genre. The characters aren’t taping themselves or their story in real time, but rather they are being recorded post factum by a documentary crew, including Anderson as the off-screen interviewer. The director/writer as well as John Brawley, the associate producer and director of photography, had the know-how for imitating true crime documentaries; that mimicry — everything from talking head interviews to authentically made but fictional news footage — is key to this film’s power of persuasion.

Calling this film Lake Mungo is confusing when realizing the catalyst for the story, the drowning of 16-year-old Alice Palmer (Talia Zucker), occurs at Norval Dam in Ararat. Lake Mungo, a dry lake in National Mungo Park, doesn’t even come up until around the one-hour mark. Of course, that potential goof in setting is really the first clue at this film’s mind-altering ending. So while Anderson isn’t quite burying the lede here, he does take extended detours before reaching the ultimate destination.

Adding to its distinctiveness among all Australian horror, Lake Mungo largely takes place in the winter months — Alice dies shortly before Christmas Day — and in parts away from the Outback and big cities. There is no blistering hot sun bearing down on the characters, and there is no rough and rural terrain to wear them down either. The B-roll footage is more inclined to show balmy weather, rain and fog. It’s an ideal environment for a ghost story.

Image: Martin Sharpe, David Pledger and Rosie Traynor as Mathew, Russell and June Palmer.

At a glance, Ararat as the dominant setting may not come across as meaningful, especially because the film has a habit of omitting pertinent context, but a deeper look into its local history will turn up a substantial piece of the puzzle that is Alice’s death. Overlooking the town, and situated on the forebodingly named Madman’s Hill, is the site of the now-nonfunctional Aradale, a.k.a. the Ararat Lunatic Asylum. Before being turned into a museum, this depot for the region’s “lunatics” was in operation for roughly 130 years, amassed over 13,000 deaths — inmates, patients and staff members — and as of today, is deemed one the most haunted sites in all of Australia. Aradale’s infamy, along with ongoing reports of alleged paranormal activity, makes Lake Mungo’s suggestion of the supernatural more imaginable.

The camera, the element crucial to all found footage and its ilk, would typically be an unchallenged deliverer of truth, yet Lake Mungo complicates this genre tenet. The cameras on the Palmer Family — parents June and Russell (Rosie Traynor, David Pledger), and their son and Alice’s brother Mathew (Martin Sharpe) — are an extension of their fact-finding operators. In other hands, though, additional recording devices, including cellphones and camcorders, reflect their unreliable, dishonest or less assured users. In the instance of a camera capturing what is thought to be a portent, there is so much nebulousness to the event that even those directly involved have no firm grasp of the information set before them. The inscrutability is enough to make the recorder go mad.

As any true crime documentary might do, Lake Mungo supplies stop-in-one’s-tracks twists, any of which could have been the deciding moment in Alice’s case, that is if Anderson had preferred an unquestionably grounded conclusion. For the better, the film goes for the stranger outcome and slides back into uncertainty. Still and all, these early revelations each have a bearing on the overall story, despite their tendency to send everyone in the wrong direction. On top of that eyeful of grief on display here, Mathew muddies the legitimacy of the supernatural in Lake Mungo with his trickery, likely as his own way of coping. Whatever the reason, without Mathew’s misguided yet not malicious act of deception, the film’s actual ending would have been less earned. As for that bombshell of Alice having a sexual relationship with the Palmers’ adult neighbors, the Tooheys (Tamara Donnellan, Scott Terrill), this unpleasant section plays into the story’s bigger conversation of haunted pasts.

Image: Talia Zucker and Rosie Traynor as Alice and June Palmer.

The importance of the film’s namesake would not jump out to most non-Australians viewers, however, Mungo National Park is not only a vital chapter in the country’s anthropological history, it’s also a site of historical tragedy. Indigenous inhabitants, including the Mutthi Mutthi, Paakantji and Ngiyampaa people, were slaughtered during European colonization. It should be said that Lake Mungo doesn’t relay this and other major facts, such as the controversial removal of Indigenous remains, to its audience. The notable locale comes up simply because Alice visited it with her class months before her death. Nothing of Mungo’s past is declared in the film, leaving the curious and blissfully uninformed to conduct their own independent inquiry.

As it should, the film’s resumption of the supernatural happens in Lake Mungo, a location that, in its own way, is haunted by restless spirits. And Mathew’s initial hoax only helped to make this third-act development more jarring. There in this land of old national horrors, Alice chanced upon her spectral doppelgänger, whom she treated as a sign of her imminent death. The floating parallels to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks ring the loudest here, given how Laura Palmer had also been made painfully aware of her mortality. In addition to this film’s Lynchian echoes is Picnic at Hanging Rock, another Australian tale of the uncanny that transpired on Indigenous territory.

Be it a nation’s colonial history, or a late loved one’s secrets, Lake Mungo fixates on the kinds of pasts that, if not careful, could impede progress. Yet, as shown with Alice’s parents and her brother, putting their ghost to rest actually leads to this film’s most dangling thread. The parting shots imply, with a chilling effect, that Alice isn’t at rest. Devastatingly, that disconnect felt in life continues in death.

For good reason, lists of the best found-footage horror and the best Australian horror tend to both feature Lake Mungo. This tremendous exercise in pseudo-reality achieves a credible depiction of the uncanny that pairs well with its astounding study of grief. Chills go from a whisper to a scream over the course of this unique film, and its residual sadness takes it to the next level.

Horrors Elsewhere is a recurring column that spotlights a variety of movies from all around the globe, particularly those not from the United States. Fears may not be universal, but one thing is for sure — a scream is understood, always and everywhere.

Image: The dead Alice.

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