It’s always a little risky, although an understandable impulse, to extend a well-received short out to feature length. Jon Bell‘s The Moogai is one that hasn’t fared so well in this transition. While it’s nice to see Aboriginal myth and indigenous beliefs on screen – with the attendant friction between tradition and modernity – there is little else to set The Moogai apart from some of the other, stronger Antipodean horrors we’ve had in recent years.

The Moogai opens somewhere around the mid-20th century. A young Aboriginal girl is snatched by a malevolent entity while hiding from representatives of the government. We then jump to the present, where Sarah (Shari Sebbens) and her husband Fergus (Meyne Wyatt) have just had their second child. What should be a time of joy turns sour when Sarah begins to get repeated ominous visitations from spectral children and hallucinates snakes in her child’s crib. Her birth mother Ruth (Tessa Rose) believes in the Moogai but Sarah passes off the legend as nonsense. Fergus believes Sarah is suffering from post-partum depression. Either way, Sarah rapidly unravels and the family dynamic comes under increasing threat.

There’s a lot of thematic meat to get ones teeth into in this relatively brisk chiller: traditional beliefs against modern medicine, the integration of those with Aboriginal descent into modern Australia, generational trauma, institutional violence, mental illness. Bell’s film tries to say much but really muddles its execution, relying on careworn jump scares and a series of other tropes that nullifies the interesting focus on native myth. The fact it is Sarah and Fergus’ second child could also have made an interesting factor. The couple would be a little more relaxed with the new arrival, or their first child Chloe (Jahdeana Mary) could have been a larger factor in the story. Yet, again Bell glances at interesting possibilities and does little with them.

Sebbens gives a suitably conflicted performance in a role in which a lot of Sarah’s distress comes from herself being unwilling to believe. This is one part of the narrative which really does work. Her rejection of her traditional beliefs prolong her suffering until she has to reunite with her estranged birth mother to take on the stealer of children. Rose also injects nobility, sorrow and compassion into her otherwise functional role. Meyne Wyatt as Fergus is also good as a devoted family man who takes his wife seriously, but like Sarah, assumes post-partum depression is at the root of her pain. Unfortunately the character rather schematically becomes a victim of institutional racism in order that the women of the family can fulfil their destiny to take on the Moogai.

Sadly, the rather predictable narrative path that Bell takes through some really tantalising ideas is the biggest downfall of the Moogai. It does a lot of things right; a likable heroine, stolid but solid metaphors, and keeping its monster offscreen for as long as possible. But it shoehorns too many ideas and themes in without many of the basic foundations of a satisfying supernatural horror being in place.

Screened as part of Sundance Festival 2024