Who Killed Alice Palmer? (A Lake Mungo Essay)
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- He’s back. Wrapped in plastic.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
drive.google.c...
CONTENT WARNINGS FOR THIS EPISODE:
drive.google.c...
Thanks to 2Mello for allowing me to use various tracks off of his albums ’Atmospheric Horror Music’ volumes 1 and 2.
YOU CAN FIND HIS MUSIC ON BANDCAMP:
2mellomakes.ba...
FOLLOW ME:
linktr.ee/tokyo_dirty
Great analysis, and a necessary point to be made about the common interpretation of it. Some say this movie is more sad than scary to them, and I would agree with that. I've seen a lot of people talk about this movie as a horror story about grief, which is one side of it, the side where you read the family as the protagonists. On the other side is reading it from Alice's point of view, in which case, it's different. It becomes a horror story about mortality, abuse, isolation, neglect, abandonment, and being forgotten. And it's so much worse.
I don't know if it's because people don't understand, choose to ignore, or just don't pay attention to the scene in which Alice talks to Ray in the past intercut with her mother talking to Ray in the present and them, in their visions, missing each other completely - just as Alice saw would happen - but that part was really important in understanding that the ending with the family moving on isn't a happy ending, but rather a bleak one, because Alice is still in that house. It's just that her mother can't see her.
And it was like while she was alive too; no one seemed to really know her deeply, not her family or boyfriend or friends, and there was no one she could confide in about her problems, including the sexual situation with the neighbors or her premonitions of her mortality. Her mother was not close to her in life and could not see her or help her in death either - an emotional neglect that stretched beyond Alice's life and could never be fixed.
The fact that even /the audience/ ourselves are so prone to forgetting Alice and her pain in favor of relating to her family instead is just another way in which she is endlessly abandoned and forgotten, perhaps to demonstrate how the living treat the dead so that they may go on. It could also, in my opinion, possibly be read as being like how abuse survivors are often ignored - either in favor of her brother (if one is of the theory that he abused her) or in the way in which the neighbors ran off and didn't face any consequences for becoming inappropriately involved with her.
Whether one theorizes that she took her own life or that her brother killed her or that she died in some other way, it's a very sad and unfair ending for Alice. A tragic fate haunted by a troubled life of enduring suffering in silence.
Oh my god This! I've seen many people talk about this film as "a broken family trying to cope with their daughter's loss." While it is a matter of perspective, not right or wrong, but throughout the entirety of the film, it is mostly about Their pain, Their trauma, Their way of coping,... but it is never truly about Alice herself. And that is the saddest and most tragic part for me.
Each and everytime the family got to see the "Darker", Real side of Alice, via the sex tape, Diary, the Phone Video,... they quickly discarded it as not being the Alice (that they once knew.) When they saw the sex tape, they raged (for valid reason) but then scapegoated the neighbors for ruining her life and purity, when it was also Alice's own concious decision to participate in the act. When they knew that Ray had already consulted Alice months before her dead, they blamed him for not having told them sooner, while he was probably protecting her privacy. When they saw the Phone Video, June said that It is "scientifically unexplainable", Matthew said that "It is her future self coming to get her." In my humble opinion, the grotesque figure that Alice encountered is not only a ghost, but also a manifestation of her raw, dark and true self. The side of herself that she unconsciously kept hidden to everyone, including herself. That is perhaps a part of the reasons why she is so terrified of it. It shows her her deepest Fear: staring her own Death right in the face, knowing that there is absolutely nothing she can do to prevent it.
In the end, as the remaining family members gather to take a final picture before moving on with their life, a shadowy dark figure, presumably Alice, is seen standing and looking through the house window. While everybody has chosen to move on, Alice still remains.
In Life and in Death, she is eternally voided of the thing she wanted the most: To be Seen and Understood. And that is the true horror of Lake Mungo.
@@user-pf8gk8oj8i I find your reading interesting and true. Sadly, it is often our own families that we cannot show our true selves to, either because we know they won't understand or because we know they cannot accept it since it goes against their view of what we should be. Worse still, people often cannot accept themselves either and in their efforts to deny that reality, hurt others without meaning to. I think many people struggle with finding anyone who is willing to see their true self, to understand it, and to accept it with all its flaws. Anyone who can find such a person is extremely fortunate in life. This struggle runs through the entire film and horrifies the audience, even those who do not pick up this message consciously.
You have made some crucial points here. I am glad I have read it. Thanks a lot.
Great essay. I feel like what makes Lake Mungo so effective is that I didn't necessarily identify with the grieving family, but rather with the ghost. Even in death, she's hopelessly alone. And the ending is sad, because though they're moving on and beginning to cope, she's still alone in that house.
Dude I see you everywhere. Mega64 videos. Dismemberment Plan pfp. Is 413 a homestuck reference
@@lyndonjohnson1992 Nah, it's just a username I made years ago in middle school. Cool to see a Mega64/Lake Mungo fan overlap. The boyz should watch it for movie club.
the part where it zooms in on the neighbors barely visible silhouette crouching in the corner of alice’s room never fails to give me chills.
actually shat my pants
I actually noficed whoever it was the first time and was surprised they didn't bring up the person but also thought it was someone accidentally caught in a hoax, which it turned out to be but it turned out to just so happen to be the neighbor accidentally caught in Alice's room tryna get to that tape when they circled back to it after the brother explaining the hoax. Lol.
But what was wild was the backyard hoax - I was SHOCKED that I did not not8ce Alice in the right corner. I'm notorious for noticing things in environments and backgrounds of photos and vids. Me and my sis when we were kids, used to watch movies over and over to the point we'd automatically shift our attention to things, not the focal point of a shot like in the vid of that couple that noticed the brother in the background, edposing the hoax. I thought I noticed Alice in the background prior to that reveal, and sure enough, I did.
When people use that old joke of “Scooby Doo taught us that true monsters are human beings” this is what they mean.
That shit was silly lol
It's crazy how it wasn't even the ghost, it was a whole, grotesque living human being.
I honestly always though it was her brother, between the bruises on him after her death and the fact she was last near him before she disappeared. It recontextualises his decision to fake proof of his sister still existing after death, like it reads as the desperate actions of a guilty brother.
Omg I love this theory
I don't think it really matters who killed her. What matters is what Alice went through during life, the pain that went overlooked. She was already a ghost before she died. Either way, the bruises are too fresh. Matthew could've just felt guilty because, again, his sister was suffering and he didn't notice
No
This interpretation, i 100% agree with. It didnt sit right with me that other essays insisted on lake mungo being a story of grief and moving on from the death of a loved one. It seemed so disconnected and yet also self centred.
Something that particularly stood out to me is the superficial framing of the final montage of the movie, where critics and presumably the family alike are shocked to learn that "omg alice was there all along thats crazy!" And yeah maybe it is a bit crazy, but through the framing that Lake Mungo gives the audience, it reallt isn't. And further with this essays interpretation of the text, it *really* shouldn't be that surprising that the family was so preoccupied with their own interests that they once again neglect their daughters presence - instead focusing on their projected and inherently false imags of Alice
Spoilers in my question so read with caution! Do we believe Alice's mother when she tells the medium she can no longer see Alice in her bedroom? I think the photo evidence of Alice's ghost being there (even in the faked photos), Alice saying she can see her Mother walking away, and the slow zoom into the front window of the house when the family is leaving for good tell a different story. It haunts me most that her mother might have chosen not to see Alice in her room when she really could. I don't think the filmmakers want to imply she's a horrible person or anything but want to make a point about how deciding to move on from grief is a moment you have to face and that you may always retain a sense of guilt to the person you are leaving behind.
This is awesome! I've been thinking about this movie since I saw it, and the various visions that are revisited through different family members tell a story!
The dad experiences a vision of Alice yelling at him, which is then replicated by an incident in which Mathew was filming her in her room without her consent.
Alice and her mom's recollections mirroring each other.
Mathew revisiting the site wearing her clothes????
I know it's a popular theory Mathew was the killer, but it's so wild to me these subtle hints go almost entirely unnoticed by viewers! Masterfully done.
Amazing analysis!
Thanks so much, I’m glad that you enjoyed it! Thank you also for linking to it in your piece on narratives in video games. I really appreciate it!
I have always loved ghost stories that play with time: ‘The Blair Witch Project,’ ‘The Haunting of Hill House,’ ‘1408,’ this film... I enjoy the idea that a ghost does not exist in any one place; that they’re unbound. It was shocking to me, when reading and watching others’ reviews, how few critics discussed this element of the story, even when talking about Alice’s meeting at the lake.
The doubling that you’ve highlighted is so important to building the sense of dread that permeates the film.
I love this movie and it's definitely one of my favorites. I respect the idea that matthew may have killed her, but personally I'd like to believe the more optimistic interpretation, because other than him being the last person to see her I don't see his behavior as abnormal at all. siblings share clothes often, for example, it makes perfect sense that a grieving brother would wear his sister's hoodie to cope with her death. I also don't think her telling him to get out of the room is unusual either, because my siblings regularly annoy me on purpose too. I believe what he says about faking the images and videos as well. in any case it's an interesting theory, and fun to think about.
not just that too, but the person above me said that they'd like to think him wearing his sister's hoodie is a way to grieve and him filming his sister is normal behavior. which while that's should be the case, it's only out of context, because there's also the bruises on his body, the way she keeps saying that she wants to talk to her parents but just "can't". especially when she said she felt like she was drugged one night and went to her parents' bedroom, but then began crying because she again "couldn't" say anything. and there's also just the brother's actions in general; he can't even explain away his actions and the explaination he gives makes no sense. he wanted to exhumed the body to confirm alice was dead? like making his sister into a scary ghost was the best or only way. it's just even weirder when he's the last person to see her and he's the only person to not express any gulit over her death. it's like more than just that she knows she's gonna die, she doesn't want her family to know their son is horrible. they'd be loosing two children, or worse, they might even excuse his actions. that's not even getting into how the ghost/body looks like she has a bruised eye, but maybe she lunged at alice to not only scare her from going to another lake again, but to hopefully scare her in a way of "you need to say something about him to your parents, you can't keep it in anymore". we could all be wrong about this theory because why wouldn't it be caught that foul play was involved? it just makes more sense than what is on the surface.
also unrelated, it's so unsettling that people bring up australia's age of consent laws when in regards to the tape of alice and the neighbors. you gotta bring up the law when regarding sexual activities w/ a teenager, you already look dumb weird.
@@allthelittleworms I would agree completely, except for the mysterious bruises on his body, causally mentioned, which he had no explanation for, and would explain why she never found closure, because her parents never discovered the truth. Interesting to think about...
@@Raszagil I thought the bruises showed up quite a bit of time after her death, not in the immediate aftermath, so I don't think it works... I would have gone for the father personally. After she was drugged, she needs to see "mum", to talk to "her". She stumbles to "her" room and watches THEM in the bed. Weird way to describe this. Maybe the father was also violent against Matthew.
Yeah, the idea her ghost is there to help the family doesn't really make sense. Especially when we consider the last photo - taken just before the family relocates - where Alice is still haunting the house. It's true, Alice isn't like most horror ghosts were they're actively harming people, but she is like most ghosts in that she continues to persist in isolation and sadness, unseen by all those around her, and there's nothing she can do about it. How the family moves on has nothing to do with Alice's ghost. They move on because of time and reflection. Alice's ghost just happens to be there. What's more, she'll continue to haunt the place apart from the family.
A big part of the uneasiness, for me at least, that Lake Mungo provides is this sense that there is a lot going on with this family just under the surface, like we see Alice’s brother and parents but also the grandparents and…there’s a lot that isn’t said out loud, but you get the sense no one is what they’re presenting, even to each other.
I think if people want to interpret the movie as a commentary on grief and moving forward then…fine, I guess. But I draw the line at acting like it’s a film about a family unit processing their feelings, becoming stronger and moving forward with closure because…that isn’t the truth. The uneasiness is still there. The unspoken secrets and tension this family have as they smile benignly into the camera is still there…and so is Alice.
Alice basically being a ghost while living. The emotional neglect from her family and feeling invisible or in the background where you’d only notice if you squint hard enough… the isolation. it’s so real which makes this movie so much more sad :(
I saw this film years ago and watch it regularly because nothing frightens me the way it does. I have never seen it as the family moving on from their grief to a happier existence but in fact what you suggest, which is that they’ve forgotten Alice in the name of “healing” and left her behind as she had always been even when she was alive. When it comes to who killed her, I never believed anyone did. I think it was a tragic anomaly in which she saw herself dead on that school field trip and knew from then on she would die. She didn’t know how, she didn’t know when but she couldn’t stop it. I always interpreted it that she simply drown and in the moment she began to drown, realized this was it and no one was even looking for her or paying attention. I think when she wrote in her diary about feeling heavy and drugged it didn’t mean drugged in the literal sense but the horrible sense of death approaching perhaps how she felt moving into the afterlife and being in limbo. I love that we don’t have all of the answers but one thing we can be certain of is that she was alone in life as she ends up in death which is both heartbreaking and terrifying.
she was in Limbo through out the movie, even when she was still alive.
I think you are right. I particularity remember the part where she is telling the guy in the session how her body didn't feel right and how she stood at the foot of her parent's bed but could not speak to them. This is an obvious premonition of her future. She is seeing and sensing a moment of her future where her ghost stands at the foot of her parents' bed. Her body did feel right because she was dead. She could not communicate with her parents because they were alive, and she was not.
this movie never scared me. it devastated me. it made me sadder than I had ever been. I was never scared of Alice, never. I pitied her and deeply felt for and identified with her.
I never realized the connections to Twin Peaks until this video, even if you don't talk about it in the actual video. Like, the family is even named Palmer! And they're both titled after a destination in nature. And it all being the tragic story of a young woman in trouble from the perspective of their grieving loved ones, all connected through surreal dreams, twisted secrets, and supernatural folk lore. Seems very obvious in hindsight, but the film does a very good job of layering its inspirations. Like I'm imagining that the director could've started conceiving this movie with the premise of "What if Frost and Lynch were given full creative freedom of Twin Peaks by the network and never revealed who the killer was?" and working in the mockumentary/found footage angle from there.
To go a bit further, and spoilers for Twin Peaks I guess: I think this also reframes the popular fan theory that Matthew killed her. Personally, I don't think that's the actual explanation with the film we've been given, it kinda betrays the larger thematic points. But I think it's certainly an angle the director considered and weaved into the movie. And with the inspiration from Twin Peaks, I think it suggests that there are further, possibly supernatural, motivations that we are not fully privy too, despite the family member potentially being the literal murderer. Leland Palmer is presented in Twin Peaks both as a sympathetic victim of tragic circumstances and the literal embodiment of evil, with his own personal autonomy being up to the interpretation of viewers. I think that could also be the case for Matthew in Lake Mungo. Also, there are things in the film that just straight up are never explained or elaborated upon. There's that one scene where you can make out a lady in a Nazi outfit in the background, and no one knows why or how that could possibly link to the events of the film.
There's a blog post by the director of photography, I believe, that talks about how important the concept of permanence of images was in the conception of the film. I think we could view the ghost in this film as a form of embodied living memory, that our understanding and even reality of events that have already occurred in our lives are not as static as we would like to believe, and their connection to present and future events is constantly evolving and changing. And that could be viewed both as a metaphor and as a literal ghost, much like how Twin Peaks blurs the line between real/surreal and metaphor/literal. The ghost of Alice Palmer really is there in the film, and she exists as a living, feeling experience of the past, present, and future for the characters to reckon with.
Damn it, I could’ve saved myself 20 minutes of typing time if I’d read this comment first!
Thank you for the links and overlap. Really enjoyed this.
I definitely have my money on the theory that the brother, Matty, had something to do with her death, but I agree she could have sought some kind of connection or comfort from the Touhey's.
While I don't think their sexual interaction could be read as consensual, as she's much too young (we don't even know how old the tape of the threesome is), the emotional isolation she'd experienced before meeting them at approximately age 13-14 would definitely have primed her to be groomed by someone predatory.
I saw this movie when I was a teenager and thought the ending montage of the photos was meant to be taken as vaguely uplifting or, at worst, generally mysterious and spooky. I think I need to see Lake Mungo again, because now it seems clear from the tone and the themes in the rest of the film that this is an absolute downer of an ending note. Had Alice been appeased, there would be no ghost in the window
Something that I noticed is this film uses high pitched atonal noises throughout it that made me think my ears were ringing for a bit - but the uncomfortable way the film's soundtrack actually scrapes around inside your head really enhances for me the idea that this is not simple a ghost story horror movie but a film about nightmare & fiction coming alive inside the heads of the audience.
really enjoyed this analysis! I just watched this movie for the first time last night, and felt so moved by the foreboding, melancholic atmosphere. your reading of the film definitely engages with the text in a more complicated way, probing the troubling heart of the story which is about how grief/loss requires the distortion of memory and reconstruction of the deceased’s identity, most often by those who didn’t actually understand the person at all. Thank you for posting this!
Spoilers!
!
!
!
!
!
Thank you for not going into the ridiculous “her brother killed her” theory. To me, that’s the dumbing down of a brilliant, horrifically affecting movie that is full of deep themes and impossible questions, eh?
“But his bruises!”
Yeah, that are purple and fresh over 2 months after he would’ve had the “struggle”. Everything is dated. Everything. Those bruises are videotaped on, I believe, March 1, 2006. The drowning occurred on December 21, 2005.
Never mind the fact that the parents could see them from the shore, and he’d have to have held her down for a damn long time before she’d die without the parents noticing anything, and if his bruises were from her fighting back, there would’ve been water splashing everywhere, and she’d have no doubt come up at least once giving her the opportunity to scream or breathe (which would make the struggle longer).
Plus, he fakes the photos to fully convince his parents to exhume her body so his mom can get closure and move forward. You’ve gotten away with murder. Are you even going to entertain the idea of having the body dug up, possibly revealing something that was missed before? Nope. Not for anything.
Either the three family members killed her together, which, no, or it was a tragic accident that Alice knew was coming, and she simply accepted it when it happened.
“But he was wearing her jacket, where she died, pretending to be her!”
Yeah, my Dad died 8 years ago, and I still wear his (now almost completely fallen apart) jacket, and I still drive by the house where he died up on the roof. Mathew was trying to be close to her, he didn’t know Bob Smeet would be there taking pictures, and got out of there when he saw him taking pictures. This was the genesis of him faking the Alice photos as his Mom fully believed that Mathew was Alice. Notice that Mathew didn’t alter the January 28 backyard photo, he began with the April 28 backyard photo a full 3.5 weeks after everyone believed Alice had appeared in Bob’s photo.
I might be (and probably am) reading too much into it, but I saw this for the first time 4 days ago, and have seen it twice more, including earlier today. My Mom died June 7 of this year, and the movie affected me so deeply, that after I learned about the brother theory, I watched it through that lens on my second viewing, and it truly made me upset. It boiled the movie down to “here’s who killed Alice, watch it thinking this” instead of focusing on the deeply disturbing themes of death, grief, closure, family, trying to move on, the horrifying thoughts of, “Do we ever really know anyone, and does anyone ever really know us?”, and so many other things that make it that much more disquieting than the easy brother theory.
Brilliant movie, I recommend waiting to watch it if you’re fresh in grief. It’s a brutal watch.
I saw a theory that the brothers bruises was a foreshadowing of his own future death
@@caitlindulas8281 ohhhhhh, that creeped me out the second I read your post. What an intriguing theory, thank you so much for sharing!!!
That's something that I also noticed when I watched the film. The mysterious death of a girl whose last name happened to be Palmer that shook a small town.
The acting by the parents is phenomenal, a seriously underrated film.
Loved this movie, it was so different and really terrifying, it really gets under your skin, what's true what's real? It's excellent.
This is absolutely terrifying, tragic and heartbreaking... Hearing her describe how she felt after the fact should send chills down anyone's spine.
There's only one song I can think of that sums this all up, even if it's not entirely accurate:
Silent Hill 4 - The Room - "Waiting For You"
Just watched this movie for the first time. Loved this analysis on it! Does anyone know if there's any deeper meaning to the family driving back from the lake backwards after identifying the body? It felt like a weird detail to have in the movie without giving it any payoff later. Maybe I'm missing something.
You know, I've just rewatched the movie and that scene got me thinking too. It feels like the car stalling was Alice trying to get her mother too to see her, yet the family finds a way to bury their head in the sand once again by driving in reverse
I took it as a metaphor for moving on, no matter what. They had to leave her there and go home to tell Mathew that it was Alice. They literally had to go backwards to move forward.
I read a comment that it was her family accidently leading Alice's spirit back to the house. There is a part in the movie about covering mirrors and other cultural practices so the dead dont cross into the living dimension and the light on the car going backwards and her father leaving the porch light on for her lead her spirit back home where she got trapped.
I wasn't expecting 2Mello in a video essay about Lake Mungo!
This is a really good video essay especially for such a small channel
Thanks so much, this means a lot! I hope you enjoy the other pieces I’m putting together
I really appreciate this reading of the film, it's something I saw as someone who had similar lived experiences as Alice Palmer 🌸
Dear Elijah, I am glad I have found you. You are great analyst. Thank you.
Saw this a while back and it easily became one of if not my favorite horror movie
Also, definitely try adding some quiet background music! It would make your dialogue a lot less plain and would make the video feel more professional, great video!
The fact that Alice got stuck in between, tells me that she was murdered. Her soul can not get over the trauma of her unnatural and premature death. She wants justice to be able to move on but does not get it. I am wondering why she did not try to give more clues regarding who had taken her life. Very difficult to see the truth. They are all occupied with themselves with what is happening to them, rather than figuring out what had happened to Alice. They want to get over it which is understandable, yet strange given the circumstances surrounding Allice's life and death.
The Collector, Splinter, Intruder, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, All American Murder, Mr. Frost with Jeff Goldblum, Suitable Flesh, The Final Girls and Better Watch Out are good horror gems.
That unsettling scene and the following ones reminded me a bit of the endings of some Pupi Avati-written works, notably "Voci Notturne" and "Dove Comincia La Notte"
Thank you for not attempting to answer the question of the thumbnail...
I love this review. I get your point about other reviewers focusing on the rest of the family. But what about the person at the center of the story? The person who either accidentally drowned, committed suicide by drowning, or was murdered via drowning by her brother? I agree this is a great movie, and I feel like we're missing the point if we ignore Alice.
Thank you for making this video. While watching the movie, I always thougt: What if she was murdered and no one is talking about it?
Interesting take. Folding Idea's fan huh?
Yo is that the Fire Walk With Me tv at the start?
But why there's nobody talking about one of the last pictures of the credits?? There's a photo of what seems to be an asian person sitting on a chair and doing something whith a pillow...WHAT THE HELL IS THAT???
I think that was actually a video Matthew took of her and was shown in the film itself. The mom also mentions seeing this scene when she describes to Ray how she sees A live sitting with a sad expression in her face
I just watched this, it’s just like the person above me said: it’s footage Mathew shot of Alice, which is shown earlier in the film, with her sitting in a way the mother talks about.
I think the brother Matt killed his sister
promosm
Clickbait title. REPORTED
After reading and watching videos, I think this film is just a well done splicing of compelling red herrings with no actual plot: just themes for you to ponder. I appreciate the film, but I vastly prefer an actual well told plot instead of just interconnected mysteries.
i burned a pile of this movie
When there is a young person named Alice in a horror film, you can bet your ass she will be abused by an adult. Probably sexually, but not always. Always look up meanings of character names, and their etymology and mythology, for horror analysis. There. Now there's a thing you know.
Also, sorry, but this film isn't scary at all and it's so slow and boring. Sorry, I can't help myself. Thank you.