If a Horror movie wants to be scary, believability can take you a long way. Lake Mungo is a supernatural documentary (not found footage) about a family dealing with the death of their drowned teenage girl. While the family goes through grief, the filmmakers indulge a paranormal side. The documentary approach lends what we’re seeing a reality that helps build the tension. By staying true to the audience’s expectations of a documentary format, the dread that settles over the family is also more easily conveyed than it might have been if we were watching something that looked more fictional. What the family talks about relates to spooky images in still photos, while the camera pulls you into the frame with an increasing unease.
This can be seen as one long build-up to a hell of a scary moment. Masterful execution of getting the viewer to focus on a single point, and then just punching them with an unexplainable image. Some put this among the greatest jump scares of all time, though it’s not a jump scare in the usual sense. More like a slow motion car crash that gets you tense for 85 minutes before injecting strong nightmare material and sending you on your way. The film went unnoticed when first released, but has been climbing the list because of a strong word-of-mouth.
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