THE DIRECTOR of Lake Mungo paid homage to Twin Peaks. Then the director of The Haunting of Hill House, Mike Flanagan, was inspired by Lake Mungo - with his character the Bent-Neck Lady. The main character Nell was being haunted by her own, doomed future self.

This movie got so under my skin that you just recapping the cell phone footage gave me chills.

my theory is that the film is an allegory of suicide. she already knew what it was going to happen, knew nobody could help her, facing her own death without a clear culprit. it makes this film so SO sad.

I am a callous horror movie enjoyer. I watched lake mungo last night and my eyes start to water every time I think of the cell phone footage

It wasn't the scariest film, but it was the most haunting.  Alice haunts me with the sadness of her story.

Also when the dad describes seeing her sitting at her (as a ghost) desk and then turning and shouting at him to get out, that's really similar to what actually happened when she was screaming at her brother to get out when he was filming her. So maybe that's what the dad was seeing.

With the “brother theory,” the mid-credit pictures make a bit more sense now. There’s like a birthday party where everyone is happy, but in the background, it looks like Alice is wailing about something. Very awesome review! Thank you!

This is my fave horror film of all time

David Lynch not David Fincher😂

Lake Mungo is a masterpiece, not just as a horror film, but as a film, period. Told in a brilliant, totally beliavable way, the story twists and turns into a existential nightmare, and I genuinely have not been able to put it out of my mind since I saw it (2021)

I completely agree after hearing your thoughts. Have you noticed that all the real photos with her actual ghost appearing is where the brother is at that exact time. The family photo, the brothers birthday video, the backyard fake, and the one that links to the brother being the killer is the video from the couple who was at the lake at the same time the brother was posing as his sister to fake a ghost photo. She was there. It’s like she’s haunting him and always watching because ghosts always hold a grudge if their life was taken from that person.

Two things. The dad wasn't freaking out and having a meltdown because this is a "documentary", not a film. We are seeing him recount the events well after having experienced and processed it. People also tend to not want to break down on camera. Plenty of documentaries dont have people melting down.

Other thing was small, but Alice wasn't walking in the footage. Her ghost was. She was watching it come to her.

I think the relationship that Matthew and Alice had was fairly normal between siblings. Brothers and sisters annoy each other all the time. What is disturbing is that the mother admits that she was emotionally distant with her daughter when she was still alive. Maybe, (and it's my theory), the bruises that Matthew get's do come from Alice as a ghost because she is closest to him in this family. It manifests as hurtful bruises but in this neglectful and distant family that is the only way to touch the one closest to the ghost. My reading of why Matthew fakes the 'ghost' footage of his sister is not only done to help his mother accept Alice's death but, also in an unconscious, perhaps selfish, manner, try to get her mother to acknowledge him as a son. Remember if the mother can't fully connect with her daughter then it's not a stretch to say that she is also cold to her son. Ultimately, I think, the irony and the horror of Lake Mungo is that Matthew, in part, succeeds in isolating his sister Alice forever.

Thank you for picking up on the Twin Peaks reference!!
And I think you mean David Lynch ;D
Alice, like Laura, 'she's filled with secrets'!
But seriously, I love this movie and seeing the ending the first time made me cry so much.
And I completely agree on the Mathew theory! So glad you mentioned it!

The weirdest part to me is that so many people take the sex tape the wrong way.

Alice was a 16 year old girl who felt isolated at home, something very clearly shown during the movie. She was all alone and just like the rest of her family, sought comfort from outside the family.

The number of people defending her relationship with the neighbors, arguing it was consensual, is honestly disturbing.

It is gagging, chokingly disturbing for a young girl to be undergoing recurring physical and sexual abuse under the noses of her parents and starts to foresee she will not survive for long (not even suicidal). The horror of being abused for a prolonged period and then the rolling dread of feeling truly, deeply doomed to be killed. The fact she was feeling that and wasn't hysterical and screaming from the realisation gives me a feeling of someone who is drowning in the psychological horror of being sexually abused as a child for a prolonged period. She may was being literally threatened with harm to the point that she was used to it. She had desensitised not just to her own harm but reconciling the very palpable feeling of her approaching destruction.

And not only that, but never ever, ever, being seen. Not by her loved ones, not by her community.

It's almost retch inducing to think of a child sexually harmed and then murdered and being left behind without anyone ever acknowledging it happened at all. The abandonment and neglect of being used up and killed and then left behind. My fucking God.

Alice in Wonderland symbolizes the confusing journey from childhood innocence to the complex, often illogical, realities of adulthood, exploring themes of identity, growing up, questioning authority, and the absurdity of life through a dream-logic world where rules shift constantly, reflecting inner fears and societal pressures. Alice's growth from a structured child to someone who can challenge the "mad" world represents navigating change and discovering one's true self amidst chaos.  Also i think her names a big hint

I don't know if you have a brother, but I am a brother myself and the way they portrayed their brotherly relationship through the footage was actually very realistic and it is not true that they only show her yelling at him or things like that because the last footage of her alive shows her smiling at the camera/her brother.
Personally, I never liked the theory of the killer brother, especially since the movie wonderfully showed his grief too and how he also needed to move on alongside his parents.
I think the movie is telling us that Alice's ghost arrives to help the family move on and to come clean with them about her secrets so that she can move on too.

Filming the movie like a documentary makes it really scary to me because it feels actually real unlike 90% of other horror movies

Not sure if you're "supposed" to feel this way, but I really dislike the family.  What kind of ruined the film for me was what you mentioned: the family abruptly decides to move past Alice's death after they find her horrifying phone footage.  Like how would seeing that haunting footage give anyone closure when it generates more awful questions than it answers? The family didn't seem nearly as impacted by it as they should have been.  However, if the film was really trying to sell the point that the family emotionally abandoned her in life AND in death, then I guess it succeeded.  This was a story about the psychological horror of loneliness, emotional neglect, abandonment, inability to connect with and be seen by loved ones, and the isolation of dealing with something so scary but not feeling like you can tell anyone about it.