Lake Mungo (2008)

While on a family picnic at the beach, Alice disappears and days later her body is discovered in the lake. Shortly afterwards odd things start happening in the families home. Her brother sets up a video camera and seems to capture Alice’s ghost. He also captures a similar image in a photo taken of the backyard.

The family hires a psychic but don’t get any answers. More cameras are set up and they catch a person searching Alice’s room. As time goes on they find out things about Alice that they didn’t know, and discover Alice had nightmares about drowning.

This is not horror in the typical way you’d expect. While there is an overall creepiness to it, there are no big scares. And if you’re expecting some big pay off at the end, you’ll be left disappointed. But it is a great fake documentary.  If I stumbled across this on TV, I’d think this was real because unlike most found footage movies, the actors seem very natural.  It held my attention, but I as it neared the end I was wondering if anything was really going to happen.  Think of this as if it’s a true crime documentary. A tragedy happens and the documentarians interview people, provide context, details of what happened and then sum up the story. There isn’t a huge final act because it’s not building up to a huge scare. It’s telling the tale of a tragedy.