Watch the Movie That Scared Horror Master Mike Flanagan

Mike Flanagan is nary alien to giving radical nightmares, acknowledgment to a filmography that includes The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, and Gerald’s Game. (His 2011 diagnostic debut, Absentia, haunts maine anytime I spot a sidewalk that enters into a tunnel.) With a caller Exorcist film connected his database of upcoming projects—something helium precocious told the Hollywood Reporter helium views arsenic “an accidental to marque the scariest movie I’ve ever made”—he was asked which movies helium personally finds terrifying, and his reply was surprising.

Speaking to THR successful the aforesaid interview, helium gave peculiar props to 2008 New French Extremity introduction Martyrs (“There’s a batch of gore, but it’s gore with a point. I mostly don’t emotion splatter”) but saved his highest praise for different movie, besides from 2008: “The past 1 that genuinely frightened maine into getting up disconnected of the sofa was an Australian movie, Lake Mungo. It chilled maine to the bone.”

You tin find Lake Mungo streaming escaped with a Prime Video membership, and escaped connected Tubi with commercials; it’s styled arsenic a documentary with found-footage elements. It’s a slow-burn viewing experience, blending a family’s conflict to judge the accidental decease of a teenage girl with an exploration of however grieving radical effort to clasp onto mislaid loved ones—in this instance, done imagination interpretation, tone photography, and a sympathetic personage psychic.

There’s besides a enigma element. The household astatine the halfway of Lake Mungo is named Palmer, and though the 16-year-old who dies arsenic the communicative begins isn’t named Laura—it’s Alice—there are echoes of Twin Peaks moving done the narrative. Alice, oregon “Ally,” is simply a small-town sweetheart with acheronian secrets that aboveground lone aft her death; she besides kept a diary detailing her doom-laden existential fears, and overmuch similar Laura Palmer, near down recorded images that illuminate the shocking parts of her abbreviated life.

It each begins, however, similar a existent transgression special; though there’s nary proposition of foul play successful Ally’s drowning, there’s the acquainted cycles of interviews: friends and relatives remembering lone her champion qualities, grim-faced constabulary officers recounting the hunt for her body. There’s adjacent her mother’s frantic telephone to Australia’s mentation of 911, gasping that her girl went for a aquatics (not successful Lake Mungo, curiously; that peculiar determination makes its value known aboriginal successful the film) and ne'er returned.

But Lake Mungo besides has an other something, a consciousness of dread that runs throughout. It’s constructed with a batch of cautiously laid elements. Eerie worldly that, taken alone, mightiness not look significant. On the mode location from identifying Ally’s body, her parents’ car volition lone thrust successful reverse. Days aft her death, unusual sightings and sounds that tin almost beryllium explained distant statesman invading the Palmer home. There’s a ellipse of family, friends, and adjacent strangers who assistance signifier the family’s grieving process, for amended and worse; astatine 1 point, Ally’s parent becomes convinced that her girl whitethorn someway inactive beryllium alive.

It’s each presented precise seriously; the “interviews” with the main characters person a definite acold detachment that feels authentic for subjects who possibly aren’t thrilled to beryllium rehashing the worst calamity of their lives. There’s plentifulness of skepticism and distrust conveyed by assorted characters on the way—but besides an ever-present consciousness of large sadness.

And, yeah, erstwhile radical speech astir Lake Mungo, they ever bring up its standout scene—no doubt, it’s the precise instant that inspired Flanagan to leap disconnected his couch. It delivers, but it succeeds not conscionable connected its merits arsenic a creepy leap scare, but besides due to the fact that the full movie beforehand has coaxed you into a authorities of heavy unease. Even without that sudden, shriek-worthy payoff, Lake Mungo would inactive beryllium a notable chiller.

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