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This entry spoils the entirety of Lake Mungo, and going into this movie completely blind is a phenomenal experience for fans of horror mockumentaries. I appreciate anyone who bothers reading this journal, but if you haven’t watched Lake Mungo, please do that and avoid this entry like the plague til you're done!
I love being scared by horror. When I say that, I don’t mean the quick jump you get from a jumpscare, but a genuine sense of stomach-dropping fear. Jumpscares can achieve that feeling, but they've gotta be good. That aside, scaring me has never been easy: I mean, horror's been my special interest since I was a tiny kid. My ma claims that when I was a little girl, I was “entranced” by horror movies on TV. I felt a sense of starry-eyed wonder watching the SAW movies. Not much has changed since then.
I wish it were easy to scare me. I feel bad for people who get nightmares from horror movies and would gladly bear that cross for them if I could. But the fact that it isn’t easy to scare me makes it so much better when horror can evoke such a strong and rare emotion in me. Lake Mungo got me, and that’s why it’s one of my favorite movies.
In every work of fiction that genuinely scared me, a slow buildup leads to the dawning realization of something terrifying and completely unexpected. That is what makes my stomach drop to my goddamn feet; I can’t just have my expectations subverted, it has to be after a slow, effectively-paced buildup. And the entirety of Lake Mungo builds up to Alice’s phone footage. The paranormal happenings are repeatedly explained away as the movie paves the way for a different kind of story before suddenly turning right back to the supernatural. And while the rest of the anomalous photos and footage are repeatedly explained away, you immediately know there’s no possible rational explanation for what was on Alice’s phone. It's sudden and unexpected. And isn’t the footage itself horrifying? Imagine knowing that something bad’s gonna happen to you—you don’t know what it is, but you have that feeling and you know it's true. And then your own bloated corpse approaches you. That is far more terrifying than the basic spooky ghost shit that was explained away earlier on in the movie, and that's another reason why Alice's phone footage is so effective. It subverts your expectations in more than one way—it isn't just the fact that there actually is a ghost, it's the fact that the paranormal presence is far more sinister than the stereotypical hauntings that were previously falsified.
I also love how the dreams tie together. The paranormal is present in this movie from the get-go, we just don’t realize the extent of it until the end, when we were already given the, "Ha! Just kidding, here's your rational explanation for the alleged ghosts!" treatment repeatedly throughout the movie. It's fucking brilliant.
I love being scared by horror. When I say that, I don’t mean the quick jump you get from a jumpscare, but a genuine sense of stomach-dropping fear. Jumpscares can achieve that feeling, but they've gotta be good. That aside, scaring me has never been easy: I mean, horror's been my special interest since I was a tiny kid. My ma claims that when I was a little girl, I was “entranced” by horror movies on TV. I felt a sense of starry-eyed wonder watching the SAW movies. Not much has changed since then.
I wish it were easy to scare me. I feel bad for people who get nightmares from horror movies and would gladly bear that cross for them if I could. But the fact that it isn’t easy to scare me makes it so much better when horror can evoke such a strong and rare emotion in me. Lake Mungo got me, and that’s why it’s one of my favorite movies.
In every work of fiction that genuinely scared me, a slow buildup leads to the dawning realization of something terrifying and completely unexpected. That is what makes my stomach drop to my goddamn feet; I can’t just have my expectations subverted, it has to be after a slow, effectively-paced buildup. And the entirety of Lake Mungo builds up to Alice’s phone footage. The paranormal happenings are repeatedly explained away as the movie paves the way for a different kind of story before suddenly turning right back to the supernatural. And while the rest of the anomalous photos and footage are repeatedly explained away, you immediately know there’s no possible rational explanation for what was on Alice’s phone. It's sudden and unexpected. And isn’t the footage itself horrifying? Imagine knowing that something bad’s gonna happen to you—you don’t know what it is, but you have that feeling and you know it's true. And then your own bloated corpse approaches you. That is far more terrifying than the basic spooky ghost shit that was explained away earlier on in the movie, and that's another reason why Alice's phone footage is so effective. It subverts your expectations in more than one way—it isn't just the fact that there actually is a ghost, it's the fact that the paranormal presence is far more sinister than the stereotypical hauntings that were previously falsified.
I also love how the dreams tie together. The paranormal is present in this movie from the get-go, we just don’t realize the extent of it until the end, when we were already given the, "Ha! Just kidding, here's your rational explanation for the alleged ghosts!" treatment repeatedly throughout the movie. It's fucking brilliant.
