LAKE MUNGO: Traditional Ghost Story or Exploration of Grief?
Arclight FilmsSpoilers for the entirety of the film follow. Reader discretion is advised.
Ever since Lake Mungo released in 2008 to little fanfare, the film has managed to slowly but surely gain a cult following among horror fans, thanks to various Reddit threads as well as some high-profile YouTubers giving the film some praise. Filmed as a faux documentary, Lake Mungo explores how the Palmer family deals with the traumatic loss of Alice Palmer (Talia Zucker), a well-loved daughter and sister. As the surname may indicate to fans of Twin Peaks, Alice Palmer has many secrets, some explored within the film while others left shrouded in mystery, in a not too dissimilar way to Twin Peaks own Laura Palmer. Set some time after the tragedy, the events in the film are mostly the accounts of surviving family members, detailing the months that followed Alice’s death, from the investigation to the emotional trauma.
The horror of Lake Mungo lies within the way writer/director Joel Anderson presents these aspects of the aftermath of Alice’s death, adorning what could be a conventional drama with the hallmarks of a classic ghost story. The family begin to catch glimpses of what seem to be spirits wandering the house, thanks to photographs and video recordings taken by the son Matthew (Martin Sharpe), which makes for some chilling imagery. Lake Mungo resembles The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity – with the documentary style being part home footage, part formal filmmaking – yet some may hesitate to even place the film into the horror genre to begin with. Despite these visually creepy moments and a single, yet brutal, jump scare, the usual tropes of the genre do not seem present in the film. There is no overblown ending characteristic to the low budget found footage genre – an ending in which the established believability of the film is discarded in favour of cheap thrills. Franchises such as Paranormal Activity as well as a film such as Devil’s Due spend the majority of their runtimes creating a sense of realness in the film, only to offer endings that often felt tacked-on and rushed. With Lake Mungo, the vast majority of screen time is given to very formal interview sections with the family. Yet, even if genre is discarded, there is undoubtedly something horrific that resides in the through-line of the narrative, a constant feeling of something being wrong.
Perhaps then, as many fans of the film have argued in the past, the film is an exploration of the human psyche, seeking to display the way we tackle the grief of losing a loved one. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s theory of what the stages of grief look like has become an often-referenced guide to frame the thinking around the acceptance of death, suggesting the process involves five key steps: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. Applying this framework to Lake Mungo will provide insight into how the film achieves this tone of constant dread, perhaps explaining why it has become such a case of intense horror for so many of its fans.
With the film mostly focussing on the perspective of the close family members and how they each dealt with death in their own way, the five steps outlined can be attributed to certain characters more than others. June Palmer (Rosie Traynor) arguably exhibits the process the clearest within the film, potentially due to the later established connection she has with her daughter in an unknown psychic way, as displayed in a dream they shared. Russell Palmer (David Pledger) decides he should be the one to identify the body, believing June should not have to go through with the ordeal. This immediately allows June to deny the death of her daughter, suggesting her husband has made a mistake while identifying the body. This example already presents the multi-stage process of grief beginning for the family, with June’s immediate denial of the tragedy playing into those who surround her as well. Yet, as will soon become clear, denial becomes an underlying theme throughout all of Lake Mungo, being a constant throughout most of the process displayed.
Anger, however, is not so easy to pin down here. This could quite easily be due to when the events of the film take place, as many of the more intense emotions felt by those closest to Alice following the event have begun to subside, allowing the family to give a more reflective account of the things they experienced. Towards the end of the film, the family discuss one of the darker elements of Alice’s secretive nature – referred to in the film as “The Toohey Video”. All the viewer is told is that Alice had been in a sexual relationship with her far older next-door neighbours, with the level of consent in the affair being left undisclosed and potential child grooming being hinted at. Analysing anger as the second step of the grieving process becomes increasingly complicated because, within the film, all these steps – barring acceptance – are intertwined with one another.
Much like denial, the idea of bargaining is what Lake Mungo bases most of its horror elements upon. As previously mentioned, Matthew Palmer presents various photographs and videotapes that seem to feature an apparition. Immediately, the mother and father begin to desperately hope it is Alice – either alive or in some spiritual form. This leads the family back into that underlying form of denial, as June demands that the grave of her supposed daughter is dug-up and she accuses Russell of potentially misidentifying the body, an idea that he begins to believe himself. Ultimately, the truth comes pouring out: as the body is confirmed to be Alice upon excavating her grave, Matthew Palmer reveals that he has been fabricating the footage. It is never fully explored within the narrative why Matthew decided to partake in this cruel creation of the footage, as his mother comments that to this day she still does not know why he did what he did. Perhaps this is Matthew’s own way of dealing with his tragic loss: doctoring photographs and video to contribute towards his own inner denial that he has lost his sister. Eventually, this leads to June getting in contact with a spirit medium, hoping that he can allow her to get in contact with Alice in some form, with the psychic’s legitimacy also being left unclear.
Although the film takes place after the events that are discussed, the family are all presented throughout much of the film as being in some state of depression. The viewer is taken through the narrative with fresh eyes, piecing together their own version of events as they unfold, whereas the family have already experienced all these events first-hand. In comparison to the first three stages of the process, depression is a far more private mental state, making it difficult to suggest whether any member of the Palmer family is experiencing this stage at all. Perhaps, then, it is best to discuss the transition from depression into acceptance, the final stage of the Kübler-Ross model. Towards the conclusion of the narrative, the viewer is introduced to a pivotal final revelation, as the Palmer family detail the discovery of Alice’s mobile phone. The phone was buried in secret by Alice some time before her death; upon inspecting the phone, a video is found which offers up even more questions than answers: haunting footage recorded by Alice seems to show her future deceased self rushing towards her. Although the family has always understood that Alice tragically drowned resulting in her passing, the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death could be the key to why the family may be stuck in a depressive state.
Upon learning this, one would expect the Palmer family to regress back into a previous stage of the grieving process, perhaps once again bringing themselves to deny the death due to the evidence they have discovered. Yet the family takes this final revelation as closure. Despite a lack of understanding of what they have uncovered and its clear similarity to the doctored footage from Matthew, they take this as the last piece of the puzzle. Perhaps the confirmation of their previous doubts and feelings towards the ambiguity of Alice’s death in the form of this video allows them to finally solidify the notion of acceptance. At the end of the film, they make the decision to leave both the family home and the tragedy which consumed their entire being behind in a final bid for closure.
Upon the film’s timeline of events reaching the current day and the viewer witnessing the family during the acceptance stage, it ends with a still image of Russell, June and Matthew in front of the home as they say their last goodbyes, leaving everything behind them. This would seem to be a suitable conclusion to the narrative and thus to this thesis, yet there is an elephant in the room in this whole analysis coming from the arguably most horrifying moment presented in the entire film, seen in Lake Mungo’s hair-raising ending. As the above-mentioned still image seems to signal the ending of the story, the frame then slowly zooms in toward the home, revealing the outline of someone lurking in the window, much like one of Matthew’s photos. The credits begin to roll, and the film presents three moments from the film to the viewer once more, revealing something that went unnoticed until then, a spirit which has been there the whole time. The ending stinger is an absolute sucker punch that throws the entire film into a new light, suggesting the initial suspicions from the family were always warranted. This may again suggest that the closure felt by the Palmers is potentially unearned, similar to the discovery of the videotape offering another potential mystery. Yet it is not the family who is provided with this final shock, it is the viewer, leaving the audience to question everything they have taken in over the course of the film while equally allowing the book to remain closed on the Palmer family and their emotional journey.
Lake Mungo, unlike many of its genre counterparts, opts to relish in the horror of everyday life. It details the experience of grief: an event exaggerated to some degree through the use of supernatural elements in order to create a mystery for the viewer to be hooked upon but fundamentally relatable as it is something that almost everyone will go through. The process of grief may not be represented here as a clear step-by-step experience. As the analysis has shown, the steps Matthew, June and Russell all partake in are in flux throughout the film, with each member dealing with grief in their own personal way. That is why Lake Mungo has earned itself such a reputation as a truly terrifying horror film, with the ending credits being arguably the most celebrated aspect of the film. It asks the viewer to question what grief truly is. The concept of a family member lingering on after death may allow some form of comfort for people, much like it did for the Palmer family. For others, it proves as a haunting idea, allowing Lake Mungo to delve deep into one of the most common fears among humanity: the unknown nature of death.
