A Mockumentary So Real It Feels Like You’re Trespassing on Grief
Every now and then, a horror film slithers out of nowhere, wearing no jump scares, carrying no CGI ghosts, and instead punches you squarely in your feelings. Lake Mungo is that movie — a deceptively quiet, documentary-style Australian horror film that manages to be scarier than most films where a demon’s name ends with “-zu.”
Directed by Joel Anderson (who, judging by the fact that he never made another film, probably achieved enlightenment and ascended to another dimension), Lake Mungo is a slow-burn masterpiece disguised as a true-crime docuseries about a drowned teenager and her grieving family. It’s part ghost story, part emotional autopsy, and part psychological warfare on your trust issues.
If you’ve ever thought, “You know what would make The Blair Witch Project better? Existential dread and believable acting,” then congratulations — Lake Mungo is your weirdly specific dream come true.
Plot: CSI: Emotional Damage
The film begins with the death of 16-year-old Alice Palmer, who drowns during a family trip to a dam in Ararat. Her father identifies her bloated corpse, the family buries her, and everyone tries to move on — which, in horror movie logic, means that’s when things start getting weird.
The Palmers, a middle-class Australian family, start hearing bumps in the night. Objects move. Their son, Mathew, begins waking up with mysterious bruises — because nothing says “subtle haunting” like a ghost that slaps you in your sleep. So, being the pragmatic Australians they are, they install cameras everywhere.
What they find on the footage appears to be Alice — standing creepily in hallways, staring at the camera, and generally making it clear she didn’t get the memo about resting in peace.
Naturally, everyone assumes she’s back from the dead, possibly to complain about her parents’ wallpaper choices. The family gets a psychic involved (because of course they do) and even exhumes her body — which, honestly, is a bit of an overreaction. But hey, closure’s expensive.
Then, just as you start to believe this is a straightforward ghost story, the movie pulls the rug out from under you: Mathew admits that he faked all the ghost footage to help his mom cope. That’s right — the film halfway through admits its haunting was a hoax.
But here’s the twist: the real supernatural evidence shows up after the fake one ends.
Because Lake Mungo is a gaslighter in film form.
Alice’s Secrets: It’s Always the Quiet Ones
After the whole “fake haunting” fiasco, the family thinks it’s over. But Lake Mungo isn’t done emotionally waterboarding them yet. They discover more home videos that reveal Alice was not the wholesome girl-next-door they thought. She’d been keeping secrets — big, dark, morally questionable secrets.
Among these treasures of trauma: a sex tape with her neighbors (who immediately move out like the ghosts themselves), private journal entries about recurring dreams of drowning, and visits to the family psychic before her death to talk about how she was seeing her own dead body.
Basically, Alice had more red flags than a bullfighting arena.
Then comes the film’s title location: Lake Mungo, a desolate, dried-up place that looks like if sadness had a postcode. The family goes there to investigate what Alice buried before she died — and unearths her lost cell phone. On it is the kind of cursed footage you’d expect to find on a haunted SD card: Alice wandering the lake at night, where she comes face to face with her own corpse.
That’s right. Alice foresaw her own death.
Some people dream of flying. Alice dreamt of dying, recorded it, and then made sure her family found the footage later — because closure is overrated when you can traumatize your loved ones from beyond the grave.
Fake Ghosts, Real Trauma: The Scariest Part Is Being Human
What makes Lake Mungo so unsettling isn’t the supernatural — it’s the human mess beneath it. The movie’s about grief, guilt, and the weird things people do when they’re trying not to fall apart. The ghost isn’t just Alice; it’s the grief that moves into the Palmer house and refuses to pay rent.
Mathew fakes hauntings to help his mom cope. The dad dives into work and denial. The mom wanders around like she’s permanently buffering. Everyone’s lying to themselves, to each other, and to the audience.
When you strip away the spooky imagery, Lake Mungo is about how death doesn’t end a life — it just corrupts everyone left behind like a bad Windows update.
Acting: So Good You’ll Think It’s Real (and Then Feel Weird About That)
The film’s pseudo-documentary format works because everyone in it acts like they didn’t realize they were in a movie. The performances are eerily natural — to the point where I half-expected Netflix to add it under “True Crime.”
Rosie Traynor as the grieving mother gives one of the most haunting performances in horror history — and she barely raises her voice. David Pledger as the dad perfectly captures that brand of quiet masculinity that only cries when no one’s looking. And Martin Sharpe as Mathew manages to look simultaneously guilt-ridden, manipulative, and exhausted, like a teenager trying to delete his browser history during a haunting.
And Talia Zucker as Alice — even though she’s dead for most of the movie — somehow manages to dominate every frame. Her presence lingers long after she’s gone, which, considering the premise, is exactly the point.
Why It Works: The Paranormal As a Mirror
Most horror movies scream for attention. Lake Mungo whispers — and it’s somehow louder. The scares are subtle: reflections in mirrors, shadows in photos, a blurred face in the background that you swear wasn’t there before.
You don’t even realize you’re scared until you’re 45 minutes in, staring at your own reflection like, “Was that always there?”
And unlike most found footage horror, which usually ends in shaky-cam screaming and abrupt cuts to black, Lake Mungoends with something worse: peace. The family moves on. The house seems clean. But in their final photographs, Alice is still there — faint, blurred, watching.
It’s not about vengeance or unfinished business. It’s about the impossibility of truly letting go.
Cinematography: Ghosts Love Good Lighting
The film looks too real. It’s framed like an actual documentary, complete with talking heads, low-res VHS clips, and overexposed home video footage. The realism is so convincing you could show it to your mom and she’d probably text you afterward saying, “That poor family.”
Even the soundtrack is unnervingly restrained — soft piano, ambient hums, and the occasional silence so oppressive you start begging for something to happen. It’s the cinematic equivalent of holding your breath for 90 minutes.
Final Thoughts: Bring Tissues, Not a Ouija Board
Lake Mungo isn’t just one of the best found-footage horror films ever made — it’s one of the best ghost stories, period. It takes a premise that could’ve easily been “Dead Teen Screams at Family” and turns it into an elegy about how we fail to know the people we love until it’s too late.
It’s chilling, yes, but also heartbreakingly human. And by the time the credits roll, you won’t be jumping at shadows — you’ll just be staring at them a little longer, wondering if they’re staring back.
Grade: A (for “Absolutely Haunting”)
Lake Mungo is that rare horror film that doesn’t just haunt your house — it haunts your empathy. It’s quiet, devastating, and creepy enough to make you delete every video file on your phone.
Because if Alice Palmer taught us anything, it’s that sometimes ghosts don’t want revenge. They just want you to look at them — and maybe, for once, see.
