'Lake Mungo' - Acceptance through the hope of the supernatural.

Josh
Jun 17, 2025
6 min read

Updated: Aug 17, 2025

Joel Anderson (2008)

If you've never seen a ghost... Look again.

One of my favourite horror movies of all time comes from my home within the land of green and gold. A movie that is often lumped into one of my favourite sub-genres of cinema, Ozplotation, but I would argue that this one is more high-brow. If this were shown during an exploitation marathon, this would be the movie everyone rests their eyes on or goes to eat dinner before watching Mario Andreacchio’s Fair Game. Of course, the movie I’m talking about is Joel Anderson’s family supernatural drama Lake Mungo. I rarely get frightened by horror movies. Like, truly frightened to the point where I’ll be eyeing off the dark corner in a room when trying to sleep for days after. But the last few frames of Lake Mungo still send chills down my spine, and for years, the only way I could share this with people was via a low-quality rip from YouTube. Thankfully, since then, Second Sight has released a 4k restoration, which I am a proud owner of. And as a bonus, it was shot in a town I grew up near, so there’s plenty of familiar sights I can point to. Ararat represent.

Brilliantly, Lake Mungo takes the form of a sit down interview documentary of the Palmer family dissecting strange events that occurred after the drowning of their daughter, Alice (Talia Zucker). Unlike traditional found footage that are mostly associated as a style to cheaply shoot and purposely hide the horror via shaky cam caused by amateur camera persons. Such as Cannibal Holocaust (1980), The McPherson Tape (1989) and then leading into the one that changed the game The Blair Witch Project (1999). To then be revived by the immensely popular and profitable Paranormal Activity (2007), that then triggered a series of high and low budget high definition found footage films that vary in quality. Rec and The Poughkeepsie Tapes (Technically before Paranormal Activity but both very good not to mention), Cloverfield (2008), Quarantine (the 2008 US remake of Rec but worse), the extremely well done web series Marble Hornets (2009 - 2014), The Last Exorcism (2010), Troll Hunter (2010), Graven Encounters (2011), The Tunnel (2011, another Aussie shout out), Apollo 18 (2011), the V/H/S (2012) franchise and so many poorly made indie movies in between these most well known entries. Yet, Lake Mungo's interview aspect is complete with recreations, playing audio recordings and old tapes, and news segments.

Which is one of the most authentic televised news segments with real visuals from local news stations to the point where I had to Google to see if this actually happened. If you’ve grown up in rural Victoria during the 90s and early 2000s, these will look very familiar to you. To top off the segment we get a subtle jump scare. A hard cut to her bloated water logged corpse. Hard hitting. Impactful. A simple image with the weight of a family grief.

What follows is the family processing life after the loss of Alice. Her Mother, June Palmer (Rose Traynor) believes she’s started to see apparitions of Alice around the house. Taking a more spiritual route, believing Alice may still be alive wanting the body checked. Still desperately wanting to believe her child is alive. While her Father, Russell Palmer (David Pledger) takes the approach of keeping himself occupied with work in an attempt to move on. Then when Mathew Palmer, her brother, (Martin Sharpe), gains an interest in photography. When taking photos around their property, Mathew captures an image that has a ghostly apparition in the form of Alice. Beyond this, he sets up cameras around the house at night and, again, captures video evidence of a ghostly figure that looks like Alice walking around the house. This sparks more hope for June. Where she’s able to continue to communicate with her daughter who was suddenly taken away from her. Even going as far as to attempt to use a psychic, (Steve Jodrell), to actually communicate via a séance with the family.

But, if you’re a savvy viewer, you would remember the opening had old photos of ghost sightings from the earlier days of photography. In which fraudsters (alleged fraudsters), would use a revolutionary method of photography called double exposure. Where could a ghostly transparent layering effect of two different images. So, they could charge people to “Take photos of dead loved ones”, so long as they had an existing photo of them… ideally a photo negative. Not only do these show for years people have had this want to believe their loved ones are constantly with them, but foreshadows the reveal that Mathew did the same trick on these photos. And going so far with the videos to bounce tapes between mirrors to create the apparition. There's admiration in how far he's willing to go to help his mother believe that Alice is okay, although it doesn't bring June much closure. But it does reveal and bring her closer to Alice than before in unexpected ways.

A suspect in her death comes into play as their neighbour is captured sneaking into her room, revealing a possible secret affair between the two. A part of her life that was hidden bought into the limelight for her family to see. Ironically allowing the family to know their daughter more in death than life. Leading them to the titular Lake Mungo, where Joel Anderson introduces the world to one of the scariest concepts I've seen in a movie. The psychic from before reveals to have spoken to Alice before her death. She asks a haunting question that buries its way into the mind of the audience. "I feel like something bad is going to happen to me. I feel like something bad has happened. It hasn't reached me yet but it's on its way." It's hard to put into words but this is something that is unexpectedly relatable. It's the sixth sense you feel when walking down a dark alley at night. It's the feeling of walking through an empty parking lot. It's the feeling we can avoid by taking a turn or different route but for Alice it was inevitable. She had to walk down this dark alley knowing the outcome on the other side.

What Alice sees at Lake Mungo blends a blessing and curse. She see's her corpse. She see's her fate. A date many of us will never know but we know it's coming. In a brilliant use of handheld low quality Nokia phone footage, a grainy apparition of her bloated body in the void of night. It's a truly horrifying concept to behold. We all have to face our own mortality one day, yet, Alice had to deal with it face to face. Although the family doesn't get closure on why their daughter was cursed with an early death but acceptance that she passed from something out of her control.

Their quest to found out what happened to their daughter, feels like the constant question someone can have about a loved who’s based from suicide. Someone who seems fine on the surface but they have a dark secret about themselves. The dread of having to live without knowing what was going on indie the head of someone they love to the point of them taking their own life. Although it's supernatural in our case, the family found closure of what drove their daughter to her death.

Yet we have one final twist. The ending shows all the footage collected with the faked Alice ghost sightings, and Joel Anderson does something genius. When I first saw this, it elevated the movie to a decent family drama to a bone chilling horror staple. And it’s all done with still images. On those pre-existing images, the camera zooms in on other parts of the image to reveal the real ghost of Alice. When our loved ones die, they are always with us in spirit.