There are manyfascinating visions of Australian horrorthat have made their premiere at theSundance Film Festival. There is the one everyone knows —The Babadook— just as there are perhaps lesser-known ones, like 2020’sRelic. A year ago, it was the breakout hitTalk to Me. Even though the latter is more than a little flawed, it wasn’t afraid to go for it when it counted. Just as there are morebold visions of horror from the festival, there are also those that come and go without leaving much of an impression. In the same year asTalk to Me, the forgettableRun Rabbit Runthat proved not all Australian horror is made equal. While not without some interesting ideas here and there, it ultimately felt more derivative of its predecessors without bringing anything new to the table. This year,The Moogaifalls into the latter category of being more superficial than scary. That it shares producers withThe BabadookandTalk to Meis where the positive comparisons end.
The Moogai
A young Aboriginal couple brings home their second baby. What should be a joyous time takes a sinister turn, as the baby’s mother starts seeing a malevolent spirit she is convinced is trying to take her baby.
What Is ‘The Moogai’ About?
An expansion of the short film of the same name, writer-directorJon Bell’s feature centers on Aboriginal couple Sarah (Shari Sebbens) and Fergus (Meyne Wyatt) who are celebrating the birth of their second child. Of course, as this is a horror movie, any sort of good feelings surrounding this moment will not last. A flashback establishes that there is some sort of malevolent monster known as the Moogai that is known for stealing children and may have now set its sights on this family. When Sarah begins seeing visions and hearing warnings about this, no one seems interested in listening to her. In one scene, where she sees a snake in her baby’s crib, she quickly tries to remove the newborn. Rather than convincing Fergus of the authenticity of her fear, he and everyone else just seem to think she may be losing her mind. Drawing from the real historical horrors of how Indigenous children were taken from their families,The Moogaiuses the genre as a metaphor that has its heart in the right place while trying to illuminate the way generational trauma can leave lasting wounds.
Such an approach does excavate some occasionally unsettling moments, though rarely is this horror film quite as scary or insightful as it wants to be. Repetitive attempts at scares fall flat and only succeed at robbing the characters of any depth, andThe Moogaihas all the bones of a solid horror film without any of the soul.By the time it takes an extra leap in the end, it just comes apart. While Sebbens and Wyat certainly give committed performances, the way their characters are written makes it hard to get a sense of their interiority beyond broad strokes. While it may be unfair to pointto the already iconic films ofJordan Peeleas an example of this type of genre exploration done right, as that is certainly a high bar to clear, part of what makes those films work is how much attention is paid to characters.
InThe Moogai, much of the film is spent straining to try to get a better sense of who Sarah is beyond what is happening to her, as we are only given the bare minimum of character depth. While horror films are built around the impending sense of dread that can leave us without much control, there still needs to be something more patient and thoughtful to the story if it is going to reach for more ambitious emotional heights. It starts to almost get there just before the finale when some of the characters reunite, but other forces are working against it that it is never able to shake.
‘The Moogai’ Can’t Deliver a Truly Horrifying Ending
Without tipping off what happens at the end of the film, a final confrontation shifts from being an experience that was already crying out for subtlety into being driven almost entirely by spectacle. Some particularly shaky creature effects and cheesy one-liners feel out of place for what the story seemed to gesture towards.While there is nothing wrong with a horror film going off the rails, the ones that make it work feel more in control thanThe Moogaidoes. Characters utter everything that the film was trying to say out loud, just in case anyone may have missed it, which leads to the story being tied up in far too neat of a bow. There are striking visuals that it stumbles upon, but it all gets increasingly swept away the longer it continues.
Even a particular loss that feels like it should carry more weight doesn’t when you reflect on how little this seemingly significant character got to be a part of the film. The conclusion tries to fold everything back in on itself, proving to be more interesting than anything prior, but doesn’t have nearly the resonance that it should. Just as the characters spend the film searching for some form of healing,The Moogaiitself never finds the right frequency to do this journey justice.
A work of Australian horror that dies in the shadow of The Babadook, The Moogai is a film that is too broad to be scary or insightful enough to leave an impact.
The Moogaihad its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
