The Big Picture

The Moogai falls short of being a truly scary or insightful horror film, relying on repetitive scares and lacking depth in its characters. The film attempts to explore generational trauma but lacks the patience and thoughtfulness needed to reach the necessary emotional heights. The final confrontation of the film is driven by spectacle and ties everything up too neatly, falling short of the resonance it was all reaching for.

There are many fascinating visions of Australian horror that have made their premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. There is the one everyone knows — The Babadook — just as there are perhaps lesser-known ones, like 2020’s Relic. A year ago, it was the breakout hit Talk 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 more bold visions of horror from the festival, there are also those that come and go without leaving much of an impression. In the same year as Talk to Me, the forgettable Run Rabbit Run that 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 Moogai falls into the latter category of being more superficial than scary. That it shares producers with The Babadook and Talk to Me is 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. Release Date January 21, 2024 Director Jon Bell Runtime 86 minutes Writers Jon Bell

What Is ‘The Moogai’ About?

An expansion of the short film of the same name, writer-director Jon 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 Moogai uses 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, and The Moogai has 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 point to the already iconic films of Jordan Peele as 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.

In The 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
Image via Sundance 

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 than The Moogai does. 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 Moogai itself never finds the right frequency to do this journey justice.

The Moogai REVIEWA 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. ProsThere are some striking visuals that the film stumbles upon near the end. ConsThough its heart is in the right place, the film is reliant on repetitive attempts at scares that never have the necessary impact needed to hit home. The characters ultimately feel robbed of any depth and are written far too broadly to give the cast enough to work with. The Moogai lacks the patience and subtlety in its ending as it ultimately ties everything up in too neat of a bow.

The Moogai had its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.