Review of Lake Mungo (2009) by Lacey F — 12 Jun 2011

Hands down the best film 'After Dark Horrorfest' has ever released. This is how several films of similar plot like 'Paranormal Activity', 'White Noise' and 'Shutter' should have been.

It does not rely on gimmicks, gore, torture, or disconnected random creepy imagery to be scary. It instead utilizes well placed and minimalistic scare tactics to slowly ramp up the intensity and uneasiness.

No real action to be found. No explosions, car chases or gunfights. But it pulls its viewers in with its desolate vibe and an sometimes overwhelming feeling of dread. Extremely well acted for a mockumentary.

Everyone is believable and it actually sounds natural. Talia Zucker is excellent and quite creepy in her relitively short screen time, and she is absolutely gorgeous too. The cinematography, lighting, score (and lack of score) and overall direction add a tremendous amount of authenticity to the film.

I don't know if I can call this a really 'scary' movie, but it is most definetly edgy and creepy, and it does offer up one legitimatly jump out of your seat scene which scares me a bit just remembering.

Despite these and a great number of other positives, it is definetly not a perfect film. It definetly takes awhile to get going. Despite this, it utlizies this down time quite well, building up alot of character development and background information.

It also tries to cram in a few too many subplots, most of which are left barely developed and then left hanging. Again though, this negitive does have a positive aspect as I sort of have to give a movie props for not spelling every little thing out for the audience and leaving some things left hanging.

Hollywood often seems to think that audiences are too stupid to deal with open ended plot details, and often over-explain every aspect of a story to the point of gross inefficiency. Overall, this is an excellent low budget horror/thriller that mainstream horror could learn alot from.

A definete upgrade from the done-to-death cliche haunted house/ghost story that I would highly recommend.