Lake Mungo, 2008

It would appear the Aussie crime kick I am currently on as far as my reading material has crossed over into movies. I have a massive stack of DVDs from the shop here to choose from -- Public Enemies, Resurrecting the Champ, Tyson, Winged Creatures, big movies about big themes, the stuff I love. Yet, as soon as I saw that one on my pile was set in the country Victorian town of Ararat, I jumped on it.

(There's also a new Aussie one called Coffin Rock here, and then there's Balibo -- so a veritable field day for me.)

I don't know what it is, exactly, that's drawing me to Australian crime, a topic I've all but ignored in my reading life. For some reason foreign settings, particularly in the US, have always been of more interest. Maybe I'm craving familiarity? Don't know. Whatever the case, after reading a book on detectives in Wagga, and then the horrendous Snowtown murders, I'm reading all about the Silk and Miller killings in Melbourne. I'm finding myself strangely enthralled reading about places nearby -- Melbourne suburbs, for example.

So, yeah, when Echuca was mentioned in Lake Mungo, I felt right at home.

I'm happy I picked this one for another reason -- it was very good. I was skeptical about the documentary style, but the more this one went along, the more impressed I became at how well the actors handled faking their 'interviews'. And that's all this is, a bunch of interviews strung together with bits and pieces of live and taped footage in between, which eventually unravel a reasonably gripping mystery.

It's extremely well put together as far as timing and stroytelling. I was in, I know that.

The premise, very basically, is a girl drowns in a dam and then begins showing up in photographs and video footage taken by her brother. Is she a ghost, or is something else going on? Turns out, the answer to that question is not near as important as what happens next. The plot twists and turns, and reveals new information all the time, fleshing out the story and it's characters into a well-rounded drama about a damaged girl and her helpless family.

It's not a horror film, it's a very effective ghost story, that's more about the ghosts within than those floating about the house. Part-way through I was wanting to turn the lights on because there are some shots here that are rivalled in their spookiness only by those Asian masters of ghost-y films.

One spot, in particular, was so tense, I almost broke out into a sweat. The tension, though, dissipated naturally -- this is not a film where things jump out at you, even though you expect them to. The filmmakers here have done a great job in letting you feel something when you watch, but never really releasing that tension until that one key moment where it matters.

And those are the best scares -- quiet, subtle, to the point where you're left wondering what it is about you that's making you so tense, because the movie's not doing anything really scary at all. Really enjoyed this one.