While the month of October brings chilling horror movies and jump scares, Lake Mungo brings psychological horrors to life.

The Australian documentary-style movie tells the story of the Palmer family and the unexpected death of their 16-year-old daughter, Alice. It starts off with Alice and her brother Matthew swimming at a local dam when she disappears. She is then found dead at the bottom of the dam, seemingly by accident.

As her family grieves they feel like Alice is still in their home and they hire a psychologist and psychic who discovers Alice’s secret life while investigating her death. This discovery sends the family to Lake Mungo to figure out her secret past.

I like this movie because it doesn’t rely on jump scares and gore to be a great film. The unsettling atmosphere and dread of what’s happening to this family slowly builds through the movie and keeps you interested. Once the plot is truly understood and what’s happening becomes clear it turns into the psychological horror it wasn’t expected to be.

The cast added a very real element to the film because of how well they played their characters. They made it feel like I was watching a real documentary with the real people and not actors portraying a story.

While I did like the movie I feel that the plot wasn’t very clear until the very end of the movie, which took away some of the joy of watching a horror movie for me. I had to rewatch it to fully understand what was happening and I caught things I hadn’t the first time watching it, which gave me the chills.

While this isn’t a true heart pounding horror movie it is a surprisingly interesting scary movie that is different from others in this genre.