Mike Flanagan is not any stranger to giving individuals nightmares, due to a filmography that features The Haunting of Hill Home, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, and Gerald’s Recreation. (His 2011 characteristic debut, Absentia, haunts me anytime I see a sidewalk that enters right into a tunnel.) With a new Exorcist film on his listing of upcoming tasks—one thing he just lately informed the Hollywood Reporter he views as “a chance to make the scariest film I’ve ever made”—he was requested which films he personally finds terrifying, and his reply was shocking.
Chatting with THR in the identical interview, he gave particular props to 2008 New French Extremity entry Martyrs (“There’s a whole lot of gore, nevertheless it’s gore with a degree. I usually don’t love splatter”) however saved his highest reward for an additional film, additionally from 2008: “The final one that actually frightened me into getting up off of the sofa was an Australian film, Lake Mungo. It chilled me to the bone.”
You will discover Lake Mungo streaming free with a Prime Video membership, and free on Tubi with commercials; it’s styled as a documentary with found-footage components. It’s a slow-burn viewing expertise, mixing a household’s wrestle to just accept the unintended dying of a teenage daughter with an exploration of how grieving individuals try to carry onto misplaced family members—on this occasion, by way of dream interpretation, spirit pictures, and a sympathetic celeb psychic.
There’s additionally a thriller aspect. The household on the middle of Lake Mungo is called Palmer, and although the 16-year-old who dies because the story begins isn’t named Laura—it’s Alice—there are echoes of Twin Peaks working by way of the narrative. Alice, or “Ally,” is a small-town sweetheart with darkish secrets and techniques that floor solely after her dying; she additionally stored a diary detailing her doom-laden existential fears, and very like Laura Palmer, left behind recorded photographs that illuminate the stunning components of her brief life.
All of it begins, nevertheless, like a real crime particular; although there’s no suggestion of foul play in Ally’s drowning, there’s the acquainted cycles of interviews: buddies and kinfolk remembering solely her finest qualities, grim-faced law enforcement officials recounting the seek for her physique. There’s even her mom’s frantic name to Australia’s model of 911, gasping that her daughter went for a swim (not in Lake Mungo, curiously; that exact location makes its significance recognized later within the movie) and by no means returned.
However Lake Mungo additionally has an additional one thing, a way of dread that runs all through. It’s constructed with a whole lot of rigorously laid components. Eerie stuff that, taken alone, won’t appear vital. On the way in which house from figuring out Ally’s physique, her dad and mom’ automobile will solely drive in reverse. Days after her dying, unusual sightings and sounds that may virtually be defined away start invading the Palmer house. There’s a circle of household, buddies, and even strangers who assist form the household’s grieving course of, for higher and worse; at one level, Ally’s mom turns into satisfied that her daughter might someway nonetheless be alive.
It’s all offered very significantly; the “interviews” with the principle characters have a sure chilly detachment that feels genuine for topics who possibly aren’t thrilled to be rehashing the worst tragedy of their lives. There’s loads of skepticism and mistrust conveyed by numerous characters alongside the way in which—but additionally an ever-present sense of nice unhappiness.
And, yeah, when individuals discuss Lake Mungo, they at all times convey up its standout scene—little doubt, it’s the exact prompt that impressed Flanagan to leap off his sofa. It delivers, nevertheless it succeeds not simply on its deserves as a creepy bounce scare, but additionally as a result of your complete film beforehand has coaxed you right into a state of deep unease. Even with out that sudden, shriek-worthy payoff, Lake Mungo would nonetheless be a notable chiller.
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