Lake Mungo (ATOM Study Guide)

Lake Mungo is the story of the twelve months of unexplained paranormal activity that followed the accidental drowning death of teenager, Alice Palmer. The film is set in 2005 in the Victorian country town of Ararat. Written and directed by Joel Anderson, it adopts an intriguing documentary style to tell this story that incorporates the use of new media such as mobile phone footage and digital manipulation of images. The film runs for 87 minutes and is rated M.

Sixteen-year-old Alice Palmer drowns while swimming in the local dam. When her body is recovered and a verdict of accidental death returned, her grieving family buries her. The family then experiences a series of strange and inexplicable events centred in and around their home. Profoundly unsettled, the Palmers seek the help of psychic and parapsychologist Ray Kemeney. He discovers that Alice led a double life. A series of clues lead the family to Lake Mungo where Alice's secret past emerges. Lake Mungo is a mystery, a thriller and a ghost story told in documentary form that illustrates how the dead can forever haunt the living.

Curriculum Guidelines

Lake Mungo (Joel Anderson, 2008) would be an excellent classroom resource for middle and senior secondary students of English, Media and Film Studies, Psychology, Values Education, Personal Development, and related social education subjects.

The film explores how people deal with grief after a death in the family. It is also a film about secrets, particularly in the world of adolescence. There are many aspects of this film that students will respond to and engage with – the story itself, the mystery and the style adopted by the filmmaker to construct the narrative. Some students may be familiar with the 1999 American film The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez) where the narrative is presented as a documentary pieced together from apparently amateur footage. While The Blair Witch Project may appear to have some similarities with this film, Lake Mungo is much more reflective and carefully constructed in the way it explores a family's dealing with grief and loss. As a story with supernatural elements, it goes well beyond the typical horror film. Director Joel Anderson explains the themes he wanted to explore in Lake Mungo as:

• How grief and loss can sometimes seem to have the power to change the very nature of reality for the grieving;
• How technology mediates experience and shapes memories and;
• How the rational can simply be insufficient in the face of profound loss.

The student activities in this guide are designed to encourage students to explore how effectively the film embodies these themes which can be partly understood through exploring the way the film is constructed. However, while technology is shown as shaping memories, Lake Mungo is also a meditation on grief and loss.