Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Most dramas will circle around the problem until they reach their core issue. Horror movies don’t – they seem to go for the jugular while the real issue might be shrouded in mystery until – gasp! – it is revealed, often gorily and always unforgivably visually. What I like about a truly good horror flick is the unflinching way they attack the real issue at the heart of its story.

Take the Australian ghost story Lake Mungo (2008), for instance. At the beginning of the film, it is already too late – we know what the result of the story is, and we get told how things unfolded. In any drama, the focus would be on the grieving parents, but Lake Mungo, while having a lot of feelings for Mum and Dad, uses them to tell the story of how Alice got where she ended up. The movie peels away layer after layer of the mystery until, incredibly, we are confronted with what happened. And that, of course, entails a lot of suspension of disbelief since we are stuck in a very scary ghost story. I may have said so elsewhere, but Lake Mungo is one of the best horror movies in years, and one of the best Australian movies ever.