Candy and a Movie: Movie #66 Lake Mungo

Lake Mungo (2008)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816556/

The last movie was an absolute dud so it's vital to my movie watching spirit that Lake Mungo picks things back up. The only thing that was scary about movie 65 was how bad it was. That sentence wasn't at all needed because the first should have been enough but I'm still distressed. Know nothing about this flick other than its ratings on a few sites. Haven't seen a whole lot of Australian movies, off we go.

A families daughter drowns in a body of water that I'm guessing is Lake Mungo and the family is giving interviews about the event. Things are going slow but in a horror movie, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. House of the Devil is the newest example of a movie where nothing happens for over an hour but instead of being boring, the movie uses that as a tool to build suspense by slipping in hints of what's to come. Hopefully some build up is coming, right now I feel like I'm watching a sad dateline episode.

Right as I finished writing that, the dad says the family keeps hearing noises from the daughters room and the door slams in the middle of the night. The mom is getting weird nightmares of her daughter standing by the foot of her bed soaking wet from the lake. One night the dad came home, heard a noise in his daughters room, went in and saw the daughter in there who then yelled at him to get out. Creepy. You know what else is creepy? The son kept getting these really bad bruises from nothing and then they would instant go away. He is also into photography and his sister pops up in one of his pictures. She appears in another photo out by the lake. I officially need to be more patient with movies. The family seems to think maybe she isn't dead which can't be healthy.

After a DNA test confirms her death everyone begins to question who the heck was in those pictures. The son leaves a video camera out and it picks out a moving figure one night. I may or may not have said "Oh Snap" out loud. A psychic is brought in and he's from somewhere in eastern Europe and supposedly knows about the old ways. Where's he's from, people cover up all their mirrors when someone dies so their spirit can't find their way back. Metal. He does a little hypnosis session with her and he suggests that they do a seance. I don't know who invented the seance but I'm pretty sure that in every horror movie in the history of the world a seance has been done in, it only brings in more demonry. Nothing happens but when they look at the video on the following day, they see the daughters ghost. I may or may not have said an elongated "ooooo" when I saw that. The psychic is surprised because this is unfamiliar territory for him. He isn't used to dealing with real spirits, just ones he makes up perhaps?

Another video is taken of her room one night and we can see her in the mirror. They pump in some spooky music and we're getting near goosebumps level. Then a series of events happens and the son gets busted for making all of this up, He created the images in the videos and it was him wearing the daughters jacket in the other people's photograph. That's pretty sick dude. I hope he gets the crap haunted out of them. He said he did it because it was better than her just being gone. Stand by what I said. I'm really interested to see where the movie goes from here because it's been leading in a closed off direction for over half of it now.

Blah blah blah a few things happen but then the son goes away and the ghost appears on the video once more. I want to believe this time but it's hard. After more searching of the old videos, the mom finds a shot of her neighbor creeping in the daughters room 6 months after her death. What was he doing in there? Looking for a video that was in her safe. What was on the video? Her banging the neighbor and his wife. Busted! Not sure what the law is in Australia but that's statutory rape over here. The family says the daughter kept the tape because something must have happened in which she stopped trusting them. Then we find out that the daughter went to the psychic a few months before she died for help interrupting her jacked up dreams. You would think he would've mentioned it to the family.

THE LAKE MUNGO SPOILER PART

The daughter drowned at a damn I guess. She went to a camp at Lake Mungo three month's before she died. 23 minutes left so and the movie is named after this place so I'm guessing this is it. There is video of her there burying something (whattttt?). The family goes to the camp site. They dig up her favorite watch, phone and a ring. For some reason, she buried all of her most precious things. They look at video on the phone. It shows the daughter going off into the darkness to bury the items and a figure appears to her walking out of the darkness. While this is going on, the play her talking about her dreams to the psychic saying "I feel like something really bad is coming". The figure gets closer and closer until you see what it is. It's her but not in her normal state, it's the way that she looked after spending a day at the bottom of the dam all barnicled up. The figure jumps at her causing me to jump at the wall behind me (just a little). The figure at the lake was like an omen and she knew she was going to die according to the mom. However, the dad wasn't convinced. The family returns home and the house feels calm.

There's a final scene in which the daughter and the moms dream telling sequences are looped together which is pretty cool. Unfortunately it's sad because it involves the mom moving away saying the daughter isn't here anymore and the daughter saying I don't think she can see me and she's leaving. They take one final picture before leaving and you can see her in the window. Aww sad. The credits show expanded versions of all the doctored photos in the movie and her ghost was really in all of them.

WELL I GUESS I WON'T BE GOING TO AUSTRALIA ANYTIME SOON. I'LL HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE HOT ONES WITH THE ACCENTS TO COME HERE.

Favorite Scene : The absolute last scene. The two dreams being told at once, the emotion, the music, that last picture :*(

Favorite Lines : Eh, nothing that great

Rating : 7.9 Cadberry Dairy Milk Snacks. I liked this movie a good deal. Although the thriller aspect of it really dropped off halfway through, the story remained captivating enough that my interest was never lost. Here's the deal about movies with any kind of spirit folks, you have to believe. Do you have to believe in ghosts in the real world? Absolutely not but if you allow yourself to believe that ghosts can be real in the movie instead of a this is dumb, there are no ghosts attitude than you can end up having a really good time. It works for me. Same thing applies when walking through a haunted house. You can stare at the ground and never get scared but where's the fun in that. Take a look around and experience everything. Things will scare you and better times are had. I Men's Warehouse guarantee it.

Alternate Ending : Spoilers as always. The family hunts down the former rapist neighbors and give them an Australian bush style whooping.

What I would do if I was the main character : Did I mention spoilers? This is one of the better what would I do's. Think about it. What would you do if you know you were going to die? Skydiving? Jet ski off a waterfall? Two chicks? I think I would spend the rest of my time playing FIFA while eating more mashed potatoes than I need possibly talking to people on the phone. Then the jet ski thing for sure.

What happens in the sequel : For the last time, spoilers! I wouldn't exactly say there was any closure at the end of this movie. In the sequel, a new family moves into the house and gets their life haunted. The psychic arrives, figures out it's the daughter, calls the mom back and she (and more importantly me) gets closure. Everyone, living and dead, moves on. Lets be real now though, that isn't the horror movie way at all. The girl at the end of Friday the 13th doesn't float to safety, Jason comes out and grabs her. Who cares if it's a dream, he'll be back.