‘The Lady of the Lake’ Review: A Disjointed Hodgepodge of True Crime and the Paranormal
I am intrigued by true crime programming and also have an appreciation for matters of the supernatural. Seeing as Ryan Grulich’s documentary The Lady of the Lake exists at the intersection of true crime and the paranormal, I had high hopes going in. The first 30 minutes of the documentary are reasonably engaging and show a level of promise. But the film quickly loses its way after that. What starts as an examination of a grisly murder and the strange aftermath ultimately devolves into a needless jumble of paranormal investigation and half-baked theories about the afterlife.
The Lady of the Lake Plays out like this:
The documentary follows the life and death of Port Angeles, Washington resident Hallie Illingworth. Hallie was unlucky in love and eventually died at the hands of her third husband. Four years after her disappearance, she surfaced in Crescent Lake. Her reappearance is remarkable because the body of water is so deep that the actual depth is currently unknown. Human remains discarded in the lake almost never reach the surface. What’s more, when she was found, one of her hands was pointed upward. Rigor mortis would have long since come and gone after four years’ time. So, her articulated limb remains something of a mystery. That, along with other details of her demise has seen Hallie become a local legend along the lines of Bloody Mary.
I have a special interest in the case based on the fact that I grew up just a few hours from Port Angeles and have school friends who live and work there now. However, The Lady of the Lake did little to satiate my curiosity or do Hallie’s story justice. There are several reasons the picture doesn’t work. The first element that jumped out at me was the cringe recreations. Grulich features seemingly endless footage of a woman dressed as Hallie haunting the lake and dancing around in a nightie. It’s really distracting and takes credibility away from the proceedings.
A lack of focus quickly derails the film.
Adding insult to injury, The Lady of the Lake lacks focus. The picture goes in too many different directions, getting further and further from the core focus as the runtime rolls on. At roughly the 30-minute mark, the picture devolves into a superfluous discussion of liminal spaces and how Hallie was likely a liminal being. Then, the filmmakers pivot to detailing the lake’s history of mysterious deaths and a serial killer who allegedly once dumped a body there. From there, we examine Washington state as a hotbed for cryptids and paranormal activity and discuss unproven methods for communicating with the other side. The aforementioned diversions only tangentially relate to Hallie’s case, making the final 60 minutes of the documentary painful to endure and largely unnecessary.
Another aspect that hobbles the film’s success is the framing. The crew shoots the subjects profiled primarily in wide shots. That does nothing to obscure their fidgeting hands. It’s nerve-wracking to appear on camera. I completely understand. But watching the talking heads squirm and twitch is distracting for the viewer. If it were purposeful and intended to give us a view into the state of mind of those profiled, that would be a different story. But this isn’t their story. It’s Hallie’s.
I wish that Grulich had stuck to Hallie’s story and spent more time going in-depth with her life, death, and legacy. Instead, that’s all frontloaded into the first 30 minutes and effectively abandoned thereafter. What follows reads very much like filler designed to stretch out the runtime to feature length.
On the whole:
The Lady of the Lake is best in its first 30 minutes when it’s discussing the titular victim. If the filmmakers had stayed on that trajectory, they may have had a more palatable product. If you are keen to seek it out, you can find the film on VOD from Uncork’d Entertainment as of the publication of this post.
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‘The Lady of the Lake'
Summary
‘The Lady of the Lake’ falters at the 30-minute mark and never recovers.
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