sarah

(The first part of this review is spoiler free) Due to the excellent quality and personal impact, this film has lingered in my mind ever since I first saw it. And I’ve been wanting to review it ever since. Lake Mungo has had such an existential impact on me that it’s become one of my favourite movies of all time. I know it states here that I rewatched it, but to be honest with you I couldn’t get through the third act of this film because of how much existential dread that part of the film has given me. Before I discuss the specifics of why I love this film so much, I’d like to give an introduction to anyone who hasn’t watched it yet. Lake Mungo is a found-footage horror movie often either being claimed as the most terrifying film ever made, or a boring and slow film not delivering on its “horror” categorization. And even though I share the opinion that this is the most terrifying movie of all time, I also get why when watching a movie deemed by that premise, that some people might not be affected by the horror of lake mungo and be left disappointed. Due to the wide scope of themes, the unorthodox approach and the visual style of Lake Mungo, I think it's important to view this film firstly as an art piece exploring some of humanity's most inexplicable themes, instead of a really scary horror flick. Then again, the film is not for everyone, and there is no guarantee that you’ll get the same reaction out of it as me. But if you do fall into the target demographic of this film (like I am), I believe it will shock you to the core. Lake Mungo is a compelling, human, grounded and haunting reflection of life and death, and I implore everyone reading this to watch it, just to have experienced it. When you do watch it, do it alone, at night and with the lights out and headphones in. I know this might sound a bit cheesy but the themes of the film are simply best experienced when fully immersed in the film. Also something very important is that when you watch this film, pay close attention to the end credits. Lake Mungo The first thing I noticed about lake mungo when watching it the first time was how grounded the story felt, especially for a horror movie. Lake Mungo tells its story using a documentary style containing found footage fragments and the anecdotal experiences told from the perspective of family members and loved ones. Everything in this movie, spanning from direction, writing and acting, sells the idea of the documentary style so well that you regularly forget that everything happening is just a work of fiction. You could attribute this quality to both the realism in which the style is portrayed and the incredibly human portrayals of the main characters, both acting wise and in the direction. I can’t overstate enough how well acted this entire film is. Everyone in this film feels like real human beings instead of fictional characters. These characters are portrayed in such a way that explore the ways of grief and isolation in an astonishingly grounded and human way. Having watched the Lake Mungo Revisited documentary, I also want to add to this that aside from the stellar performances,the directing of Joel Anderson also contributed a lot to these incredibly real performances. Joel made the actors really delve deep into their character’s psyche, and allowed them to improvise for a large amount of the scènes, whilst still maintaining the excellent writing that went into these characters. Now I’m going to be delving into the plot and characters of the film, so spoilers ahead! Lake Mungo’s plot revolves around the reactions and subsequent events following the drowning of 16 year old Alice Palmer. The film follows the perspective of mainly interviews of her loved ones recounting their experiences from before and after Alice’s death. I think it’s a very strong decision to focus on the immediate aftermath of the reaction of Alice’s sudden death instead of trying to make it as spooky as possible from the get-go. The way that grief sets in in those first few moments for the Palmer family is so well portrayed. Like with the example of Russel leaving the porch light on, in hope that she’d still come home somehow. Or the weird memory of having to drive backwards home from the dam, because the car stalled. These small moments often get glossed over in the theme of grief in service of the bigger and more explicit sad reactions to someone passing. With that I am in no way saying that those moments are inherently bad, it’s just that I think the small, recounting moments of Lake Mungo fits a lot better with the style of the film. And when the really emotional scènes do appear, they hit all the better. From around the 20 minute mark the plot expands to where things start to get strange. From the weird sounds, dreams and experiences to the even more strange way this family copes with the gravity of the situation. June walks into other people’s houses to avoid being in her own life, Russel focusing completely on his work to get through the grieving process as fast as he can and Matthew trying to give her mother closure in the strangest way by doctoring Alice’s ghost into his pictures. It’s clear that the family needs closure, but what way is the right way to find closure? After all the small twists and craziness, we as viewers alongside the family want to find out how to resolve all this turmoil and grief. I think it’s around this point that the film subtly sets up a red herring premise: “If the family finds closure by finding out what happened to Alice, her ghost will be set to rest”. This is a premise not unique to the horror genre. The idea that a ghost exists because of unresolved business has been told many times. But Lake Mungo subverts that trope in such a subtle but phenomenal way. With that premise, and with the help of psychic Ray Kemeny, the third act delves deep into getting to know what happened to Alice. And I think this is where the movie shines the best, all the buildup of the first 50 minutes of the movie builds up to an unbelievably sad and incredibly haunting experience. I cannot understate how much existential dread this entire part of the movie made me feel. Starting out with the family finding out about the Toohey tape, to eventually finding out what happened to Alice at Lake Mungo. This part of the movie diverts the attention from the feelings of the family, to the feelings and experiences of Alice herself. And in this part of the movie the sadness of everything happening to Alice. The things explored in this chapter of the film are so well executed, everything the family discovers and the implications behind that fill me up with the utmost of sadness and existential dread. This part also contains the scariest shot in the history of horror. And I’ve been getting that same feeling of dread even thinking about that one scène to the point of still getting teary eyed. When I first watched Lake Mungo I didn’t expect much in terms of how scared I would be watching the movie. As stated in my initial review, I don’t get scared by horror media that often anymore. Over the years of consuming horror content I’ve dissociated from horror premises and tropes to the point of not really feeling genuine fear for them anymore. I think It’s due to the commercialisation of horror that both happened with the type of horror content I’ve seen over the years, and by just getting older. When I was a kid, horror scared the absolute shit out of me. I used to watch creepypasta youtube channels and I remember not being able to sleep because of some of the videos I saw. When exposed to creepy ideas at a young age, your fear consumes so much of you that it lingers in your mind for a decent while. The thing that kept me coming back to watching creepy videos was the intrigue and curiosity of the ideas portrayed in those videos. Even though I was terrified of all the things described I wanted to know more about what they meant, where they came from and if they were real. But as I grew older, my fear of horror started to decrease. I got a better grasp of what was real and what was fake. And instead of a genuine curiosity of scary subjects, I started to seek out horror content to replicate the feelings of dread I had felt when I was younger. To me, this is what happens with a lot of people who consider themselves to be horror fans. Instead of the genuine primal fear you felt as a kid, you start to seek out horror as a form of quick and fun entertainment. Eventually it devolves into a sort of culture, where a lot of horror media becomes a watered-down version of itself in trying to make it as scary as possible, adhering to every trope that has worked before. What I’m getting at is that a lot of films are being made for the sole reason to make you jump, and to get the thrill of feeling temporarily scared whilst safe in your house and being able to completely ignore and forget about it the next day. And don’t get me wrong, I love that kind of stuff, I’m all for making something as scary in the moment as possible, and I love feeling the thrill of being scared. It's just that a big percentage of horror media has become so safe and so commercialised that it doesn’t get me anymore. What makes Lake Mungo stand out so much is the level of importance placed behind the scary stuff happening. And the implications behind them. Lake Mungo combines its stunning liminal cinematography with a story about the disillusionment with your own family, the existential dread of the concept of your impending death and the feeling of having to hide your own true self in your own home. The movie creates an uneasy feeling of dread that slowly creeps up to you the entire runtime. It starts so slow that you don’t even feel you’re getting more and more on edge. From every creepy visual shown, to every small revelation making the situation even more serious. Until it eventually explodes in a series of scènes so unbelievably haunting that by the end of the film you’ll feel the biggest pit of dread and anxiety in your stomach. These scènes work so well partly because of the cinematography and direction of the film. Lake Mungo contains such a distinctive visual feel to it. The film is shot in such a way that it combines documentary style interview footage, with cinematic liminal shots and grainy found footage. Each element helps with adding a different side to the dark, gloomy feel of the film. The soundtrack also fits perfectly with these shots. These shots help with creating feelings of uneasiness, dread and isolation. The movie builds so much tension with these shots, but never releases them with a cheap jumpscare or anything; (for example the scène of June’s first session with Ray). The second way Lake Mungo makes you feel uneasy is in the implications behind every single creepy shot. Take for example the Matthew hallway footage. When you first watch this scène it's just an excellently creepy ghost video leaving you feeling pretty uneasy. Later on it gets revealed that Matthew faked the footage and you start to feel a sense of relief. Only to be subverted again by seeing the neighbour Brett Toohey sitting in the corner or the room. The film decides when it focuses on certain details, the ideas behind the shots are often even scarier than the shots themselves. Which leaves me to talk about the dreadful implications behind the themes of the film. In the third act we find out that Alice was not the happy go lucky girl everyone thought she was. We find out that she was groomed by her neighbours, we find out that Alice is scared of dying, we find out that she felt invisible to her parents and most of all we find out that Alice had a sense of impending doom. After returning from Lake Mungo; Alice knew she was going to die. I think that this is what gets me the most. I am incredibly scared of death, I’ve mentioned it before in my Taste of Cherry review, but the concept that there is an artificial predetermined clock ticking down until the moment you die is an existential concept I have not been able to accept. "You are going to die, Annie"; is a line spoken by the psychic: Ray Kemeny. This line doesn’t have anything to do with the plot of the film, but thematically speaking it fits perfectly. A big theme of the film is the paralysingly terrifying concept of the acceptance of your death. "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. And it’s getting closer. And I don’t feel ready. I feel like I can’t do anything" -Alice Palmer This line is spoken during one of Alice’s consultation tapes with Ray, it plays both in the very first scène of the movie, and it plays during arguably the scariest shot of all time. At the beginning of the film the statement holds no merit, because of the lack of context provided. But when it plays again later on in the film, it reflects perfectly what's on screen and what has been happening. The scène where Alice records her own bloated corpse from the future has got to be the most bone-chilling, terrifying thing I have ever seen in my entire life. I’m not kidding; I have genuinely never felt more scared in my whole life than when I first watched that scene. Everything, from the buildup to the sound design, the grainy flip phone footage, the visuals to the jumpscare to the mere concept behind the scène itself. It is perfect. I kid you not, I have gotten teary eyed multiple times merely even thinking about that scène. I have gotten that same sense of dread whilst writing this review. I cannot think of any piece of media that has ever left me feeling that sense of wrongness as that scene. I seriously had a small panic attack when I watched that scène. I'm not gonna watch that scène for a good while again, I just can’t do it. The entire composition of the scène, both visually and sonically, had ensured that I would get scared in the moment, but the implications behind the scène has made those visuals linger in my mind ever since. The concept of wandering off, and coming face to face to a ghost of your own future corpse is something so intensely horrifying to me. And the fact that she knew it was an omen for her future fate makes it even worse. I genuinely cannot think of any other real life (non lethal) experience that would be scarier than what happened to Alice Palmer at Lake Mungo. Warnings and omens have always been kind of a creepy and intriguing concept to me, and Lake Mungo deals with it the best I have seen in any media ever. The fact that Alice had buried her favourite things including the phone used to record her experience at Lake Mungo carries such a neat symbolic meaning. I believe that she buried her stuff in acceptance of what’s to come. She saw something she wasn’t meant to see, and captured it on a phone. Henceforth, she buried it and her favourite things, as an acceptance of her own fate. This is both beautiful but also kind of sad. It's so heartcrushing that she never felt like anyone could help her escape her fate, or even talk to someone (apart from Ray), about her fears. I guess you could see it in 2 separate ways; Alice either accepts her fate, because there was nothing anyone could do about it, or Alice gives up, because she doesn’t believe anyone can help her with her fears. Coming back to Alice’s quote from earlier, it starts to make a lot more sense. After seeing something that you weren’t meant to see, it would be terrifying to live the last months of your life knowing something bad is going to happen to you. This is one of the parts of the movie that resonates so well with me. How hard would it be to have to pretend you’re a happy kid after seeing what you saw? How hard is it to realize your family doesn’t know you as well as they think they do? How painful must it have been to live in both acceptance and fear of your own death until even after you die? All these ideas and themes make me feel so connected with Alice. I’ve shared the same types of isolation and dissolution that Alice has with the people around her. For a huge part of my life my true self has been a stranger to the people around me. Due to things like past struggles with depression, I’ve grown a bit estranged from who my family believes me to be. And taking my transgender identity into account, I’ve been living as a stranger to my friends and to myself for a long time, and it leaves me feeling so isolated and sad sometimes. Lake Mungo explained this idea in such an interesting and incredibly sad way that it spoke to me on such a personal level. The need to be seen for who you actually are is something so important but so easily overlooked. This is one of the biggest take-aways I got from Lake Mungo. At the end of the film, after having found out everything there was to find about Alice, the family felt a sense of closure. Allow me to bring up the premise I talked about earlier; the idea that the haunting would stop if the family found out about everything and found closure. But at the end of the film, when it seems like everything is okay; the camera zooms in on the ghost of Alice, who still lingers after the family’s moved on. That is because I think that the point of Alice haunting her old home was not that her ghost wanted her family to just find out what happened. Alice wanted to be seen, both in life and in death. The crossing over of the past, present and future is a way in which this desire is explored. In the film, there are various moments intersecting from when Alice was still alive, to her ghostly appearances from the present. Like with the quote from Alice her diary beneath this paragraph, which intersects with the dreams June had been having. I think this point illustrates the idea that even after Alice died, her parents were still unable to see what she wanted, which leads to what eventually happens by the end of the film where she isn’t felt by her family anymore. Taking everything into consideration, I think Lake Mungo is one of the most harrowing films I have ever seen. A film that encapsulates the concepts of grief, isolation, premonition, liminality, existentialism and disillusionment to a perfect degree. I know it isn’t for everyone, but this film hit all the right notes for me, and I believe it to be one of the best works of fiction ever made. I want to leave this quote at the end of my review, because it encapsulates much of why I love this film so much. Thanks for reading my review if you made it this far. "I had a dream last night. I was cold and wet. I felt heavy, like I'd been drugged. And when I woke up, the sensations didn't go. I was feeling sick and confused and I was starting to get scared. I needed to see mum, to talk to her. I stumbled to her room and as I stood there at the bed watching them, I was overcome with this intense sadness. Then the sadness turned to fear. I just stood there paralyzed with fear and I realized that there was nothing that they could do for me anymore. I've never felt so utterly alone. Everything felt wrong-my body, the way things looked. Then I realized that there was something wrong with me. I started to cry standing there at the foot of their bed." -Alice her diary

This episode is everything what makes the senritsu kaiki files so great. Chaotic horror stuff. Crazy people, and absolutely insane plotlines. Holy fuck what have I even witnessed. Kudo has honestly never been so unhinged, hes lost it completely. He's torturing people now. We do frown upon it. This is the funniest entry by far. I love this and I don't know what is going on. absolute madness. Complete bullshit in the best way. shout out to Ichikawa and Tashiro for maintaining some sense of normalcy.

The Amazing Digital Circus! I'm not that big of a fan of the show, In the way that I've watched all the episodes pretty recently instead of when they were released. But the cultural existence of this show has always played a part in my life due to my friends talking/making jokes about it ever since it started. So it does kind of hold a bit of sentimental value. This was a great end! I'm so happy the creators tried to explore and answer some of the questions they set up earlier. Instead of going on forever whilst only creating more mysteries (like what happened with fnaf and lost). The character arcs are neatly resolved, the scènes are expertly crafted, the emotional bits land and the movie doesn't try to be something it isn't. I'm very embarrassed to admit that I almost cried like on 3 occasions of watching this movie. The characters are just reallly compelling which helps with going in a bit of a more emotive direction. Although the amount of emotional scènes is a bit excessive. I think alot of people expect tadc to be something more mindblowing in terms of plot and narrative. Whilst if you ask me, the show excels more in charm and the characterisation. And the creators knew that, so they made the best finale they could have. It is a shame they didn't make jax transgender though.

Decent, the film strongest point is definitely its themes. I actually got so frustrated at the main character of this film. Fuck that guy. Where it falls flat is the predictability. It carries many tropes which kind of annoyed me. The scares are neat and eerie. Although they don't get me personally. Like I know how this stuff goes. If you know what to expext than it won't get to you.