DARK, DARK MY LIGHT: Lake Mungo turns out to be a Blair Witch-ified version of Pet Sematary–King’s best novel, if you ask me and I know you didn’t–a cruel and sad meditation on grief. We are so convinced that there must be reasons; and I loved Lake Mungo for its insistence that no reason could ever be as big as the loss.

Lake Mungo is also about proof. It’s about the difference between knowing something happened and knowing what happened. (The imagery of linear streetlights along the highway vs. randomly- or divinely- or fate-placed stars is intentional, I think.) For a while I worried that the twists upon twists would solve the mystery rather than deepening it; that didn’t happen.

This is a big, sad movie which uses every inch of its genre.