The Moogai

The-Moogai
The Moogai

The narrative of Australia’s so-called ‘Stolen Generations’ Aboriginal children taken by the white government, forms the crux of the plot in Jon Bell’s Sundance horror movie, “The Moogai” which is based on his short film made in 2020. Sadly, this American Audience protecting metaphorical extension is what limits the startling assertiveness of Bell’s first feature film, a short but effective jolting drama with a succession of signs, but no crux or drama is there to form a resolution concerning these signs.

A very fascinating prologue, decades back in the timeline sustains the audience’s awareness in the Australian context as white men in suits try to catch and abduct black children in an Aboriginal reserve. Some of these children, a pair of sisters, manage to resist their abductors and avoid the fate of being ethnically cleansed and forcibly assimilated, but one of the children eventually loses her battle to the dark figure that lurks in the background: the legend of moogai, an eerie demon who uses claws to grasp children.

Nonetheless, the primary plot chronicles events that took place in our current day. One of the immigrant girls, Ruth (played by Tessa Rose who is seen in her advanced years and seems to age in this role with grace and authenticity) still has scars on her face after being in contact with the Moogai. This is quite the family epic as we are introduced to Ruth who goes to visit her biological daughter Sarah (Shari Sebbens) who is pregnant, having recently been in contact with her. As Sarah’s new son Jacob is born, some strange voices and events occur heralding the arrival of the Moogai, who seems to want to take Jacob next, driving Sarah into a crazed infatuation with self-pitying violence that is somewhat… erratic to say the least, but not poor in more constructive aspects of oneself.

While “The Moagai”, makes it rather easy to analyze most of the situations and their context in the movie, they seem to only fit tangentially within the storyline, which is quite unfortunate. There is great potential for context, quite amazing, but it is poorly realized. It’s a movie that dabbles in too many genres and does not deliver on each properly. It’s a director’s exercise on harsh and manipulative timing flaws. This is partly due to the untamed errors in placement in puzzles where the shocking, the emotional, and the secret is exposed too much. In contrast, faulty cuts scene one after another lead to a complete loss of viability from jumps, surprises, and their accumulations.

The movie has numerous subtle messages however very few of these are explored in a rich or imaginative manner. In the same way that Sarah, a white-passing light-skinned woman, struggles to come to terms with the dual physically challenging aspects of giving birth and emotional aspects of meeting the African American mother she was forcibly removed from, this same woman has to think about the possibility of Jacob -her white-passing child as opposed to her black looking daughter – being subjected to that same history of forceful separation from parents and culture. However, in the case of this self-analysis, it is the audience that needs to be concerned about the possibility that Sarah has any biases, and this should engage with the film rather than be buried within the film’s subtext and presentation. The camera seldom lingers on any space or individual for very long in order to allow for the complications raised from an individual space’s importance and individual reactions towards and contemplation of them.

The Moogai is often referred to as a ‘long armed’ creature, possibly implying the long arm of the law, yet as has been exposed by the various loaded metaphors found in the film, this boogeyman ends up literally so in a manner that ironically distances it from Bell’s intergenerational trauma narrative. That the Moogai is anything but scary in appearance is perhaps a secondary concern when its implications aren’t nearly as chilling as they ought to be.

white assimilation would seem to be the theme of Sarah’s, from her being adopted by white parents to Ellen’s Indigenous culture is hardly one that endorses, her treatment of her black daughter and husband, numerous white cops, doctors, and lawyers in the movie who easily victimize aboriginal subjects. They are not part of the story but seem to focus on that feature more like background artifacts while the white supporting characters come to be involved in a shaky social narrative which is besides the point, at the very best, auxiliary to the story of Moagais.

Ultimately, when the film does get around to wrapping all its cultural double meanings into the narrative, it does resolve all lurking concerns rather easily. The only question left open by the time the movie ends is whether Sebbens can act, with Bell’s oppressive directing style seeking to downplay any of her acting skills. She more than holds her own against Rose, who delivers a performance that gives Ruth an intense sense of pain and raw vulnerability. Unfortunately, her own part as Sarah needs her to speak and act in a most unfeeling and stilted manner that advances the plot dynamics of the film and its overall shape, instead of providing emotional texture that might allow for a sense of dread and despair that is human.

“The Moogai” is at its core an Australian feature that has, in its many movements, a visual language that might tell or appeal to viewers about Australia, and whilst such a function is of social relevance, it strikes one as being very much of a scholarly nature. Ironically, the very wounds and the deep-seated historical violence that lay hidden in broad daylight are the very aspects that such films choose to ignore due to the lack of dynamism and tension in the craft and execution of the work.

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