Lake Mungo

Well the movie itself has some flaws. It has some parts that is really unnecessary. But the allover story is really interesting. It is one of the slowest horror/mystery movies I've seen, but i think that it benefits from it. The scares are mostly...not really scares, but they will get you goosebumps for sure. But you really have to stay the entire movie to get the entire thing. The end is what made it for me. People are comparing it to paranormal activity, and I get that, but the matter a fact is that these two movies are not very similar, the only thing really is that they use some home movie style footage. Anyway, its a good movie if you like slow movies, and good scares. But its no movie theater material.

I've literally googled the entire web to see a single evidence of why this is so "scary", "unsettling", "creepy", etc. and all I've found so far are people making esoteric comments like "this was a beautiful tale about ...", "this kept me scared as hell.." etc. I literally finished watching after 3 attempts. The first time I literally fell asleep (I never fell asleep during movies, this was the first time) The second time I really got bored and switched to watching something else. The third time I really decided to carve out 90 minutes of my life and really dedicate to finishing the film because I've been reading so many raving reviews online about it. I really tried. All the way till the end. It was really difficult because the whole movie was very convoluted, slow paced (I don't think I've ever watched such a needlessly slow paced film before), and too many plot holes that made me unable to appreciate it. For starters, even before we get to whether this is a "scary" movie or not, I can confidently say that it's a "badly directed" movie. Most of the plots the director throw at you are completely unrelated and convoluted and totally unnecessary. This makes it really hard for me to focus on the film, especially considering how slow the movie was. The rabid fans will call it "slow burn", but NO. I've watched tons of slow burn movies, and I appreciate a well made slow burn movie when I see one. This wasn't one. This was just slow, badly directed movie. And as for the "scary", "unsettling", "creepy" part, I don't know what you guys are smoking, but there are way more scary unsettling and creepy movies out there. I love watching horror and thrillers. One of the most frequent responses I see online when somebody complains about this movie is a bunch of haters saying "huh you just have bad taste in horror, it's not the movie", "nah if you like THAT kind of 'horror' movies, just go watch freddie krueger", all of which are super pretentious and condescending. I'm pretty confident that I've watched more horror and thrillers than most of these people because I really watch a lot. And I can say that THIS IS NOT SCARY. Granted, there is ONE minute in the entire film where it can be considered creepy or scary, but that is all. And that one minute doesn't justify the boring, drawn-out, convoluted, badly-directed rest of the movie. Nowadays there are so many movies and content to consume out there, and people really hate wasting time because time spent watching one movie could have been spent watching another better movie. And there are thousands of better horror movies out there than Lake Mungo. If you have enough time to waste, so much that you don't care, then go ahead and watch Lake Mungo just for the heck of it. But at least don't mislead other people into thinking maybe there is something there. This is a badly directed, unscary, super slow, and convoluted movie. Sure you may like how it's a "beautiful story about grief", but if that's what you're looking for, go watch other drama movies that are way more beautiful, well-paced, well-directed.