MIFF Session #10: THE MOOGAI

Young couple bring their second child home after a birth that has involved the brief clinical death of the mother Sarah. After some culture clashing between Sarah, her biological mother and her foster mother) the new child attracts the attention of the spirit of the Moogai, a First Nations boogieman who snatches children. Sarah finds this out through a ghost girl identical to her daughter except for the ghostly white eyes. Superstition battles rationalism until the Moogai either retreats into the shadows of tradition or appears in full terrifying form.

This film attempts something interesting: making a horror fiction out of an historical horror fact. A prologue sequence plays a scene from the time of the stolen generations whereby the Australian Government broke up First Nations families with bad intentions and disastrous results. That's how you make a local fable work. The problem is that it cannot work as a film as that relation between source and execution is not allowed to breathe and take form. The screen is crowded with side issues that are given such equal weight that they rob the story of its suspense and distract the audience from the centre. It's a writerly film in that ideas that sounded good at the time have been allowed inundate a screenplay that should be lean and tense.

This means that every fresh scare feels repetitive instead of contributing to a mounting dread. Each supernatural crisis (and some of them are very strong) is allowed to dissipate into the general vibe and we start feeling like we're waiting for the big showdown as we sit through a lot of support acts. When that comes, it's well done and the monster of the title is well designed and brought to life with a message about reconciliation and shared grief. By then, it has felt like a slog.

Here's the thing. If I say this film has history I don't mean it addresses history. It does that but its more crucial history is with the film festival itself. In 2020 Jon Bell's short film of the same name won awards at MIFF and deserved them for a tightly constructed and genuinely eerie tale of ancient legends creeping into the life of a city couple. The final shot sends shivers (it might still be viewable through SBS on Demand). It's fifteen minutes long and doesn't waste a second of that. This expansion, instead of going deeper, just adds more baggage. It reminds me of the difference between Andy Muschietti's impactful short horror Mama and the big bloated mess he made of it when Hollywood came knocking with a budget too boundless to resist. Then and now, the short said it and the feature sank under its own weight. Bell has clear talent. Now he will have to fight twice as hard to get his next one off and running. If the mainstream is the light, please, as artists with things to say, run to the darkness. Your ideas will look even better there. It's counter intuitive but it keeps proving true.