Second Sight Films, out now

After 16-year-old Alice Palmer drowns while swimming in the local dam, her grieving family start to experience a series of strange, inexplicable events.

Writer/director Joel Anderson’s sole feature movie credit is this 2008 Australian mockumentary horror which works best when hit totally cold. This limited edition set from Second Sight presents the movie in a new transfer, complete with extras to impress the collector.

Playing out like the sort of documentary you can catch on Netflix, there’s no suggestion of artifice in this clever, fictionalised account of a young girl’s disappearance. Ostensibly a portrait of grief and the way that a family unit tries to heal after such a momentous loss, it also packs in some unsettling scares. It’s the verisimilitude that sells the story – you feel like you’re watching real people rather than actors – and the contrast in film footage formats (from TV news reports to blurry home movies) helps convince you that you’re watching a story collated from a patchwork of sources. And just when you think that you’ve got this covered… do not skip the credits!

There’s an original commentary by producer David Rapsey and DoP Kohn Bradley as well as an enthusiastic new commentary by writers Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Emma Westwood. There are also interviews with Bradley and Rapsey and actors Carole Patullo (Sargeant Drouin) and James Lawson (Frederick Rosskamp). 13 minutes of deleted scenes, video essays and new perspectives from filmmakers Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead and Rob Savage complete the package, which also throws in some art cards and a booklet of new writing, interviews and behind-the-scenes photos.

Verdict: It’s rare to watch a horror movie and be genuinely impressed by its originality, especially when you’ve sat through the amount of dross that I have. Lake Mungo is that film, and while it doesn’t jump out at you, it carefully lifts the hairs on the back of your neck. 9/10

Nick Joy

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