by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $12.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Shari Sebbens, Meyne Wyatt, Tessa Rose, Clarence Ryan, Toby Leonard Moore, Bella Heathcote
Intro:
… while The Moogai gets a lot right, it misses the mark when it comes to delivering on its creepy, supernatural premise.
It’s strange that we don’t make more indigenous themed horror movies in Australia. Seems like something we should be knocking out on the regular. After all, horror films are big business when they hit and one of the biggest problems with the genre is the lack of innovation.
Combining genre tropes with iconography from the oldest continuous culture on the planet seems like a bit of a lay down misère. We’ve had a few before, mind you. Tracey Moffat’s 1993 flick, BeDevil, springs to mind. Warwick Thornton’s 2013 anthology movie The Darkside is another. And, of course, both Cargo (2017) and The Nightingale (2018) have indigenous subplots weaved throughout. Still, you’d reckon there’d be more.
The Moogai by first time feature director Jon Bell is the latest attempt, and while it succeeds in many areas, it’s not quite as assured as one might hope.
Expanded from the short film of the same name, The Moogai is the story of an aboriginal couple, Sarah (Shari Sebbens) and Fergus (Meyne Wyatt), who have just brought home their second baby after a very tumultuous birth. Dealing with the usual newborn baby problems of lack of sleep and constant anxiety, Sarah also begins experiencing vivid nightmares and waking visions about a white eyed ghost girl and a long fingered creature. Said creature is a ghost or Moogai and seems deadset on snatching Sarah’s bub. But are these visions all in her head or is Sarah really being targeted by an ancient creature hungry for the taste of ruggie?
There’s a lot that works about The Moogai. There’s a terrific cold open, set during the dying days of Australia’s stolen generation, truly a real life horror, and the cast are all uniformly good. Meyne Wyatt and Tessa Rose are particularly effective as Sarah’s husband and birth mother respectively, and Bella Heathcote does fine work as dodgy friend, Becky. There are strong scenes that deal with the undercurrent of racism in Australia and the impact of generational trauma, however, the script never successfully weaves them together with the horror elements. Sarah’s character arc suffers a lot because of this, tracing a dramatically inconsistent journey. Shari Sebbens does her best with a thankless role, but the material was clearly in need of further development. And when the horror does appear on screen it feels anemic and unoriginal, an echo of the same tropes you’ve seen executed more deftly dozens of times before.
Perhaps this story will hit different with an indigenous audience, and it’s great that writer/director Jon Bell has had a chance to share his story, but unfortunately, while The Moogai gets a lot right, it misses the mark when it comes to delivering on its creepy, supernatural premise. Still and all, if it gets enough bums on seats, perhaps this will help usher in a long overdue indigenous horror renaissance.