Lake Mungo (2008)

I like my horror to be a little more ambient than the balls-to-the-wall bloodshed and gore sort we often get. There’s a time and place for that kind of stuff, but I’m much more into movies that creep at the same pace as Lake Mungo, a film shot as a fake documentary about the death of a girl named Alice and the ways in which her family deals with her loss.

There isn’t much in the way of thrills in Lake Mungo, but the action of the movie gets increasingly unsettling as the family begins to spiral and believe that Alice is haunting them. It doesn’t go full Paranormal Activity, but the family does start recording their home in the hope of finding some proof that she is still with them, and what comes of these explorations is sufficiently lo-fi and eerie. If the rising tension of the movie keeps you around long enough, stick through its credits to be totally weirded out and gain a newfound uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach. — Moises Taveras