The film had its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival on 21 January 2024, and was released in Australian cinemas on 31 October 2024.
Synopsis
The story is about a young Aboriginal mother who believes that her child is possessed, and includes Indigenous Australian themes related to the Stolen Generations (a government policy of forced removal of Aboriginal children from their parents) and The Dreaming.[1]Moogai is the Bundjalung word for "ghost".[2]
Jon Bell's short film of the same name won the Midnight Shorts Grand Jury Award at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival, as well as Best Director at the 2021 Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.[3] The short film is available in Australia on free streaming service SBS on Demand.[4]
Bell is a Wiradjuri / Bundjalung / Yaegl man, hence the choice of the title in the Bundjalung language, which means "bad spirit" somewhat like the "boogie man". He said about the short film that he intended it to illuminate the intergenerational trauma faced by Aboriginal Australians in particular mothers whose children were forcibly removed from them, creating the Stolen Generations.[5]
Feature film
John Bell said that his (feature) film is "a love letter to the Aboriginal women in his family", acknowledging the way that Aboriginal women "have continued to create families and hold families together in the face of hundreds of years of genocidal practices and policies", referring specifically to the policies under which Aboriginal children were removed from their families. He says that the horror genre provided the ability for him to explore the impact of the removals, which he does by "repurposing" tropes of the genre, which provides the commentary.[6]
The Moogai was produced by Mitchell Stanley of No Coincidence Media, with Kristina Ceyton and Samantha Jennings, of Causeway Films. South Australian special effects company KOJO Studios was responsible for the visual effects. Marty Pepper of KOJO, who served as, executive director, post-production, created a replica of the set at his own property in Willunga to create effects during post-production.[1]
The film was released in Australian cinemas by Maslow Entertainment, Umbrella Entertainment, and Ahi Films on 31 October 2024.[9][6]
Reception
Upon the world premiere of the feature film at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, the film received mixed reviews.[10][11] In his review for RogerEbert.com, Brian Tallerico suggested that "tightening the effects" would help the film, and hoping that it would be further refined before its theatrical release.[12]
The film was more positively received by Australian reviewers and audiences upon its Australian premiere at the 2024 Sydney Film Festival, as it won the Audience Award for Best Australian Feature.[13]
After its cinema release, Sandra Hall of The Sydney Morning Herald gave it 3 out of 5 stars, writing that "Bell is a skilled and experienced screenwriter", but it "doesn't give the actors enough time or space to embellish their characters [enough]", and the film "isn't as scary as it's trying to be".[14]
Ali Alizadeh, a creative writing lecturer at Monash University, writing in The Conversation, praises Bell's talent, but felt that the film should have embraced more of the horror genre's "darker, more shocking aesthetics" rather than the greater focus on the thematic topics.[15]
