There's only one moment that doesn't work, when it jumps to J-Horror for all of three seconds. It's completely at odds with the rest of the film. There may be something there, but I can't see it. Other than that, it's haunting and beautiful and moving from start to finish. I've never seen the combination of ghost story and family documentary so richly realized, and as a reflection on the intersection of human nature, memory, and the photographic/cinematic process over and above a ghost movie.

On one hand it's a very weak horror story but on the other hand it's somewhat effective because it's relatively believeable. It's a great film to watch at the start of a night before watching other horror films because it bolsters your suspension of disbelief

mildly creepy fake documentary. rly mildly.

Very low-key and not really that filled with scares, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The story changes just often enough to remain interesting and I have a soft spot for ghostly apparitions. Well, not really a soft spot, more like a 'goosebumps on places where they shouldn't be' type of discomfort. As such, the few moments that were meant to be disturbing had the right effect. The deathly apparition appearance in particular was surprisingly creepy. Nice cinematography too.

Takes quite a long time for the story to begin to solidify, and when it does, it is actually not that interesting. The actors are great, but they can't save the dragging, and frankly boring, plot.

Overall Enjoyment: 25/40, Plot/Themes: 15/20, Cinematography/Direction: 15/20, Acting/Writing: 10/20 A unique and interesting horror story. Drags a bit in the middle, but is well worth a watch. Very creepy atmosphere.

I get found footage montage style horror movies but making them work is trickier than filmmakers tend to think. Lake Mungo is lazier than most with its heavy reliance on talking-heads mockumentary and yes, slow zoom-ins on blurry photos. It's cheap and really snuffs out any chance of creepiness for the most part. The plot meanders and wastes a lot of time on blind alleys. There was one moment, late on, when it seemed like scary stuff was starting to happen, but the movie was over a wink later.

Although it will inevitably be compared with other pseudo-documentary-style horror movies, the true inspiration was, in my view, "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me," both thematically and otherwise. The narrative takes some unexpected turns that makes it more interesting than the typical horror movie, and it is put together in quite an accomplished manner. While not terribly horrifying, it does manage to effect a certain resonance, with some very nice cinematography in the moments between the video.

Bad Movie

Calkiem calkiem...

Poor. Waste of time.

This film probably holds the record for highest number of slow zoom-ins on blurry photos. It's almost entirely made up of (fake) talking heads documentary footage, home movies, and the aforementioned slow still photo zooms. Even if the film is supposed to be more emotional and poignant than scary, the characters never really say anything interesting and far too much time is spent on the ghost aspect. By the end of the film I was wishing for anything even remotely exciting to happen.

Boring. This mockumentary about supernatural events in a small Australian town aims to be both disturbing and profound but fizzles out around the 20 min mark mainly due to the repetitive narrative and ends up lacking both scares and profundity. Not recommended.

It was some what slow, but I liked the pseudo-dokumentary style and they made it work quite well. Ali's story had a Laura Palmer vibe to it and the mobile video was super eerie!

70.750

good premise, so so execution. The documentary aspect of it takes away any possibility of real suspense.

It gets more and more absurd the longer it goes on and the majority of the "twists" just lead to nowhere but the movie is scary and that's something most of the horror movies don't achieve nowadays.

I'm growing rather tired of the modernised version of documentary style horror. It worked well in the 60s and 70s and EVEN THE 80s because the film equipment was poor enough to make it look real. The art of the fake docuhorror is lost on modern times