With an idea like "girl dies in mysterious manner and kept secrets about her life, oh also her last name is palmer" I wanted to think I was going to get some twin peaks vibes at least a little bit from this film. Although yes asking some random movie to be like David Lynch is a high ask
Instead however you get this very slow paced film where almost every second feels like padding. I would suggest cutting it down to thirty minutes would fix this, but what do you cut? What's important enough to leave in the film?
My main complaint is nothing is elaborated on or explored in an interesting way. Very late into the film is where we discover the "secret life" of our dead girl (Alice) and also we find out yes Alice is a ghost (which that whole plotline with the brother faking the footage should have been cut in the screenplay stage). We find out that Alice had sexual relations with her neighbors and that appearently the husband of the pair of neighbors BROKE INTO THE HOUSE of the main cast and no one noticed? Also they appearently move and untraceable? Like there is no documents of them acquiring a new house? Did they flee the country? Did they get fake identities? We don't know!
Then we get this plotline of going to the title place Lake Mungo, which at first I thought was going to be some creepy weird place, where something went down. We even get cellphone footage from other characters that imply something happened to Alice. Well what happened to Alice is she met her future ghost? Or something? We never get a real explanation on what alice really saw or rather why she saw it. The film however treats this as the climax of the movie like the family found the big secret of the film, when this would be like the inciting incident of a regular movie.
The movie then ends on a photo of the family I presuming leaving the house, it zooms and we see alice in a window. Implying Alice is still haunting the house? Huh? The film seems to be more concerned with the family getting closure on their daughters death rather than exploring themes of supernatural. Which I think is bad if you are using supernatural elements. I think this movie should have been more like idk a fake murder documentary than a fake ghost one at least it would have made more sense and then you wouldn't have to explain the rules of ghosts in your universe. You could even still have scary cellphone footage at the end of you wanted.
I think this film is also really confused on a lot of metrics, mainly screenplay wise. The writer seems to think creating as many red herrings and cryptic lines of dialogue will make this film more suspenseful. When it just makes it more frustrating from a narrative perspective. For instance their is a scene with the grandmother of alice who says she never fully loved Alice's mother (June) and she thinks it might be the same with June and Alice's relationship. We never get an answer or resolution to that question, it is just there to throw you for a loop and maybe think June is like a suspect or something?
Anyway this film is acted pretty well except for like a couple characters but I guess you could just imagine the character is camera shy because this is a mockumentary film. The camera work was fine and the editing was okay. Sound was a little bit of issue, due to the lack of suspense they add a lot of white noise into this along with long lingering shots usually of a not very good photo of Ghosts Alice so overall this film isn't really worth it. I think some elements of the story are cool I just wish the film was less confused and also like a 30 minute short instead of it's actual runtime.
Instead however you get this very slow paced film where almost every second feels like padding. I would suggest cutting it down to thirty minutes would fix this, but what do you cut? What's important enough to leave in the film?
My main complaint is nothing is elaborated on or explored in an interesting way. Very late into the film is where we discover the "secret life" of our dead girl (Alice) and also we find out yes Alice is a ghost (which that whole plotline with the brother faking the footage should have been cut in the screenplay stage). We find out that Alice had sexual relations with her neighbors and that appearently the husband of the pair of neighbors BROKE INTO THE HOUSE of the main cast and no one noticed? Also they appearently move and untraceable? Like there is no documents of them acquiring a new house? Did they flee the country? Did they get fake identities? We don't know!
Then we get this plotline of going to the title place Lake Mungo, which at first I thought was going to be some creepy weird place, where something went down. We even get cellphone footage from other characters that imply something happened to Alice. Well what happened to Alice is she met her future ghost? Or something? We never get a real explanation on what alice really saw or rather why she saw it. The film however treats this as the climax of the movie like the family found the big secret of the film, when this would be like the inciting incident of a regular movie.
The movie then ends on a photo of the family I presuming leaving the house, it zooms and we see alice in a window. Implying Alice is still haunting the house? Huh? The film seems to be more concerned with the family getting closure on their daughters death rather than exploring themes of supernatural. Which I think is bad if you are using supernatural elements. I think this movie should have been more like idk a fake murder documentary than a fake ghost one at least it would have made more sense and then you wouldn't have to explain the rules of ghosts in your universe. You could even still have scary cellphone footage at the end of you wanted.
I think this film is also really confused on a lot of metrics, mainly screenplay wise. The writer seems to think creating as many red herrings and cryptic lines of dialogue will make this film more suspenseful. When it just makes it more frustrating from a narrative perspective. For instance their is a scene with the grandmother of alice who says she never fully loved Alice's mother (June) and she thinks it might be the same with June and Alice's relationship. We never get an answer or resolution to that question, it is just there to throw you for a loop and maybe think June is like a suspect or something?
Anyway this film is acted pretty well except for like a couple characters but I guess you could just imagine the character is camera shy because this is a mockumentary film. The camera work was fine and the editing was okay. Sound was a little bit of issue, due to the lack of suspense they add a lot of white noise into this along with long lingering shots usually of a not very good photo of Ghosts Alice so overall this film isn't really worth it. I think some elements of the story are cool I just wish the film was less confused and also like a 30 minute short instead of it's actual runtime.