The Moogai

Director: Jon Bell
Starring: Shari Sebbens, Meyne Wyatt, Tessa Rose, Bella Heathcote, Clarence Ryan, Jahdeana Mary, Toby Leonard Moore
Distributor: Mushrooms/Umbrella
Runtime: 86 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2024
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc

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Rating notes: Mature themes and coarse language

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.

At the opening of The Moogai, there is a statement about the Stolen Generation and the decades of the practice of government authorities taking young Indigenous children from their mothers, settling them with white families. But, along with this Australian social background, the filmmakers introduce Aboriginal themes, especially the story of The Moogai, a strange bogeyman character, which in First Nations lore wants to kidnap and possess children.

The film was written and directed by Jon Bell, who contributed to the successful television series exploring Aboriginal issues, Redfern Now and Cleverman. It is over to the audience to make what they will of these two strands, and the interconnection between these two attempts at kidnapping and possessing Aboriginal children.

The scene is set in 1970. It begins lyrically with a supervisor with a group of children happily playing – a focus on two sisters. And then the officials arrive to take away the children, the supervisor whistling, the children fleeing. The two girls rush to a dark cave where one of the sisters is captured by The Moogai.

Then a 2024 story. It is not quite what we might have been expecting, as it begins as an urban story. The central character, Sarah (Sebbens – a strong screen presence), more than competent in her business world, is offered promotion. She is married to a genial husband, Fergus (Wyatt). They have a young daughter, Chloe, and she is pregnant.

After a particularly difficult birth Sarah’s new child is born. Sarah had a cardiac arrest during the birth and we see her white parents and her dependence on them. However, Sarah’s birth mother, Ruth (Rose), who wants to protect her from the influence of the Moogai, has found her daughter. She wants to make contact but is rebuffed by Sarah. There is a strong scene where Sarah refuses to have a smoking ceremony in her house because of fire alarms and legislation, Ruth painting her wall, trying to paint the baby to protect it from the Moogai. Sarah is a sophisticated, anti-superstition, urban businesswoman, seemingly quickly assimilated into the white population, not wanting to connect with her Indigenous heritage.

As expected, the film veers into the eerie atmosphere. Sarah and her tiredness, her dreams, hallucinations, even suspicious of Chloe, clinging and hugging her newborn baby. Visits to the doctor, visits from Ruth, her white mother trying to fix things at home – but, it is too much, Sarah going into institutional care but being rescued, fleeing the city.

There is an appropriate dramatic confrontation with the Moogai, extraordinary prosthetics to make the Moogai a kind of monstrous, rapacious creature. Ruth is there to support Sarah, Chloe and the baby, a circle of ritual fire, strange serpents, and a final violent climax.

Audiences might have liked the screenplay to take the narrative further. However, audiences may realise that this Moogai scenario is symbolic of the power that created the Stolen Generation and that the issues are not yet fully resolved.