THE MOOGAI Trailer (2024) Shari Sebbens

THE MOOGAI Trailer (2024) Shari Sebbens

THE MOOGAI Trailer (2024) Shari Sebbens
© 2024 - Umbrella Entertainment

Maslow Entertainment has released the trailer for the Australian psychological horror film The Moogai. Watch it above.

The narrative intertwines First Nations storytelling with psychological horror, delving into the haunting legacy of the Stolen Generations. In Indigenous Australian culture, “Moogai” refers to a malevolent spirit or “boogeyman,” setting a chilling tone for the film’s exploration of fear rooted in cultural lore.

The story centers on Sarah and Fergus, a young Aboriginal couple celebrating the birth of their second child. Their joy turns to anxiety when Sarah begins seeing a sinister entity she believes is intent on taking their baby. Fergus, unable to see the apparition but concerned for his partner, grapples with the possibility that Sarah’s perceptions may be endangering their family. The film poses a tense question: Is the threat supernatural, or is it stemming from within?

The cast features prominent Australian actors, including Shari Sebbens—known for The Sapphires and Thor: Love and Thunder—and Meyne Wyatt from We Are Still Here and ABC TV’s Mystery Road. Supporting roles are filled by Tessa Rose (Top End Wedding), Clarence Ryan (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga), Toby Leonard Moore (Mank), and Bella Heathcote (Relic, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies).

This is the feature-length debut for director Jon Bell, who’s building upon his acclaimed short of the same name. The film is produced by Kristina Ceyton and Samantha Jennings of Causeway Films—who previously worked on Aussie horror hits like The Babadook and Talk To Me—alongside Mitchell Stanley of No Coincidence Media.

Earlier this year, The Moogai made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, garnering international attention. It later premiered in Australia at the 2024 Sydney Film Festival, where it won the GIO Audience Award for Best Australian Feature. The film also featured at the Melbourne International Film Festival and received the $100,000 Film Prize at the CinefestOZ Film Festival in Western Australia.

The Moogai is scheduled for a wide release across Australian cinemas on October 31, 2024, coinciding with Halloween.

Maslow Entertainment

TAGS: Australia, Horror, Jon Bell, Meyne Wyatt, Shari Sebbens, The Moogai
Maslow Entertainment today released the spine-tingling trailer for the highly anticipated First Nations psychological horror film THE MOOGAI, just in time for Friday the 13th. Starring Shari Sebbens (The Sapphires, Thor: Love and Thunder) and Meyne Wyatt (We Are Still Here, ABC TV’s Mystery Road), THE MOOGAI will release wide in cinemas in Australia on Halloween (31 October 2024).

Synopsis: Sarah and Fergus, a hopeful young Aboriginal couple, give birth to their second baby. But what should be a joyous time of their lives becomes sinister when Sarah starts seeing a malevolent spirit she is convinced is trying to take her baby. Fergus, who can’t see it but desperately wants to believe her, grows increasingly worried as she becomes more unbalanced. Is the child-stealing spirit real or is she in fact the biggest threat to the safety of their family?

The film received its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and its Australian Premiere at the 2024 Sydney Film Festival, where it won the GIO Audience Award for Best Australian Feature, followed by the Melbourne International Film Festival. This week, THE MOOGAI was awarded the prestigious $100,000 Film Prize at CinefestOZ Film Festival in WA.

The film is the directorial feature debut from writer Jon Bell and is based on his acclaimed short film of the same name. A psychological horror that weaves the haunting history of the Stolen Generation with First Nations storytelling, the word Moogai has several meanings for Indigenous Australians, including “boogeyman”.

Starring Sebbens, Wyatt, Tessa Rose (Top End Wedding), Clarence Ryan (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga), Toby Leonard Moore (Mank) and Bella Heathcote (Relic, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), THE MOOGAI is produced by Kristina Ceyton and Samantha Jennings of Causeway Films (The Babadook, Talk To Me), and Mitchell Stanley of No Coincidence Media (We Are Still Here).

THE MOOGAI received major production investment from Screen Australia’s First Nations Department in association with Screen NSW through the Made in NSW Fund and Regional Filming Fund, and financed with support from Spectrum Films, Kojo Studios, Anahat Films, Salmira Productions and Head Gear Films. Post, digital, and visual effects supported by Screen NSW.
DIRECTOR:
Jon Bell

STUDIOS:
Causeway Films Head Gear Films No Coincidence Media

DISTRIBUTOR:
Bankside Films

RATING:
Not Rated

RUNTIME:
86 Minutes

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Shari Sebbens
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Meyne Wyatt
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Tessa Rose
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The Moogai is a horror film by writer-director Jon Bell and was released in 2024. Following the birth of their child, an Aboriginal couple prepares for the joy of their new family member. However, the mother begins to sense -and see- a dark spirit she believes is trying to steal her newborn child.
Australia | 2024 | English | Drama, Horror | Rated: M

Shari Sebbens stars in Jon Bell’s striking First Nations pychological horror film The Moogai, winner of the Audience Award for Best Australian Narrative Feature at Sydney Film Festival.

This screening is followed by a Q&A with Director Jon Bell and special guests.

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An emotionally captivating and culturally relevant horror film.

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A must-see First Nations horror film from the producers of Talk to Me and The Babadook
Sarah and Fergus, a hopeful young Aboriginal couple, give birth to their second baby. But what should be a joyous time of their lives becomes sinister when Sarah starts seeing a malevolent spirit she is convinced is trying to take her baby. Fergus, who can’t see it but desperately wants to believe her, grows increasingly worried as she becomes more unbalanced. Is the child-stealing spirit real or is she in fact the biggest threat to the safety of their family?

Having received its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, The Moogai won the $100,000 Film Prize at the Western Australian CinefestOZ Film Festival, one of the richest film festival prizes in the world.

Presented by Sydney Opera House

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Credits
Jon Bell
Writer, Director

Kristina Ceyton
Producer

Samantha Jennings
Producer

Mitchell Stanley
Producer

Sean Ryan
Director of Photography

Cast
Shari Sebbens
as Sarah

Meyne Wyatt
as Fergus

Bella Heathcote
as Becky

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Section: Midnight
Director: Jon Bell
Screenwriter: Jon Bell
Synopsis: Sarah (Shari Sebbens) and Fergus (Meyne Wyatt), a hopeful young Aboriginal couple, give birth to their second baby. But what should be a joyous time of their lives becomes sinister when Sarah starts seeing a malevolent spirit she is convinced is trying to take her baby. Fergus, who can’t see it but desperately wants to believe her, grows increasingly worried as she becomes more unbalanced. Is the child-stealing spirit real or is she in fact the biggest threat to the safety of their family?
Sales Agent: Bankside Films
Panelists: Shari Sebbens, Meyne Wyatt and Bella Heathcote
First screening: January 21

Key quotes: Of her draw to reteam with Bell on The Moogai following their work together on series The Gods of Wheat Street, Sebbens said: “The script, for me personally, the reason I’m drawn to it is Jon’s writing genre. Indigenous people in Australia getting to dip their toe into the genre pool for the first time was really exciting, and of course, the allegory, the messaging, and the underlying story that addresses our shameful and tragic history in Australia, which is the Stolen Generations.”

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On the future of Aboriginal storytelling, Sebbens said:
“Genre, that’s where it’s at, at the moment. That’s where the exciting stuff’s happening. I think the future, though, is letting us stuff up more than once. Historically, we’re only allowed to make one grand entrance, and if we get it wrong, we don’t get another chance. So, I think that for me, the exciting version of the future is where Aboriginal people get to be a bit mediocre as well, actually, instead of always striving for excellence.”

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The Deadline Studio at Sundance ran from January 19-23 at Montgomery-Lee Fine Art on Main Street, when the cast and creatives behind the best and buzziest titles in this year’s lineup sat down with Deadline’s festival team to discuss their movies and the paths they took to get to Park City.

Thank you to our sponsors McGee & Co., Final Draft, Portrait Creative Network, and Courser.

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Meyne Wyatt
Shari Sebbens
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The Moogai
Stories of Australia’s “Stolen Generations” — Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families by a white government — fuel the central metaphor in “The Moogai,” Jon Bell’s Sundance horror movie based on his 2020 short film. Unfortunately, this well-meaning metaphorical approach defines the strict boundaries of Bell’s feature debut, a brief but languid thriller rife with reminders of meaning that fail to coalesce into something thrilling or moving.

A riveting prologue, set decades in the past, orients the viewer within Australia’s torrid history, as white men in suits attempt to chase down and kidnap Black children on an Aboriginal reserve. Two of these kids, a pair of young sisters, evade this fate of ethnic cleansing and forced assimilation, though one of them ends up taken by a supernatural force hiding in the shadows: the Moogai, a folkloric boogeyman who snatches children with its sickly, talon-like fingers.

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The main story, however, is set in present day. One of the surviving girls, Ruth (now an elderly woman, played by an impeccably dialed-in Tessa Rose) still bears the facial scars of her encounter with the Moogai. We’re dropped into an ongoing family saga as she visits her pregnant biological daughter Sarah (Shari Sebbens), the film’s de-facto protagonist, with whom she was recently re-united. As Sarah and her husband Fergus (Meyne Wyatt) welcome their second child, the baby Jacob, his arrival is accompanied by strange voices and happenings — warnings that the mysterious Moogai might be on its way to snatch Jacob next, sending Sarah down a rabbit hole of… well, not quite madness, but certainly animated self-doubt.

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“The Moogai” wears its metaphors on its sleeve, though they don’t end up woven into the narrative with very much skill. The intention is thoughtful, but its artistic execution is anything but. It’s a film whose rote horror movie tropes fail to deftly hold and release tension. Blame that on framing where that which ought to be jarring, stirring and hidden is made far too visible to be impactful, coupled with editing that robs each reveal and jump scare of its impact.

The film is loaded with self-evident subtext, though little of it is mined dramatically or conceptually. Just as Sarah, a light-skinned, white-passing woman, deals with the simultaneous physical complications of a difficult birth and the emotional complications of being reunited with the Black mother from whom she was once stolen, she’s also forced to confront the fact that Jacob — her own white-passing child, as opposed to the visibly Black daughter she already has — might be the victim of that same lineage of forced removal from one’s parents and culture. And yet, the onus of this confrontation (and any possibility of Sarah’s own biases) is entirely on the audience to consider, and to intellectualize, rather than it being a lurking possibility within the movie’s subtext or presentation. The camera rarely holds on any space or character long enough to introduce complex possibilities through reaction or contemplation.

The Moogai is frequently described as a “long-armed” creature — a reference, perhaps, to the long arm of the law — but despite the numerous loaded metaphors at the film’s disposal, this boogeyman also ends up literal in its presentation, in a way that ironically severs it from Bell’s tale of intergenerational trauma. That the Moogai is anything but scary in appearance is perhaps a secondary concern, when its implications aren’t nearly as chilling as they should be.

The idea of white assimilation surrounds Sarah on all sides, from her own adoption by white parents and her rejection of Ruth’s indigenous beliefs, to the dismissiveness with which she speaks to her visibly Black daughter and husband, to the many white cops, doctors and lawyers in the film who readily victimize Aboriginal subjects. Those social dynamics are treated as background artifacts, while the white supporting characters end up playing a part in a flimsy social drama that feels, at best, incidental or parallel to the story of the Moogai.

When the movie eventually ties its cultural double entendres together, it leaves no lurking fears to the imagination. Its only open question by the end is whether Sebbens is a capable actress, since Bell’s filmmaking seems intent on hiding her talents at every turn. She holds her own opposite Rose, who brings a vivid sense of hurt and humanity to Ruth. But unfortunately, her own role as Sarah requires her to navigate stilted dialogue and inhumane behaviors that serve the logistics of the plot and the movie’s outward shape, rather than emotional nuance that might give way to human terror and anguish.

Ultimately, “The Moogai” is a movie whose gestures in the realm of metaphor might inform or interest viewers about Australian history, though this function is primarily academic. Sadly, its attempts to express the lingering pain and far-reaching historical trauma behind these experiences are rendered moot by dull and tensionless filmmaking.

Read More About:
Sundance Film Festival
‘The Moogai’ Review: A Limp Australian Horror Film Made of Colonial Metaphors
Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (online), Jan. 28, 2024. Running time: 86 MIN.
Production: (Australia) A Bankside Films production. Producers: Kristina Ceyton, Samantha Jennings, Mitchell Stanley.
Crew: Director, writer: Jon Bell. Camera: Sean Ryan. Editor: Simone Njoo Ase. Music: Steve Francis.
With: Shari Sebbens. Meyne Wyatt, Tessa Rose, Jahdeana Mary, Clarence Ryan, Bella Heathcote.
Maslow Entertainment has announced that the highly anticipated First Nations psychological horror film, THE MOOGAI, will be released in Australian cinemas on 31 October 2024. The film had its World Premiere earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival and its Australian Premiere at the 2024 Sydney Film Festival, where it won the GIO Audience Award for Best Australian Feature. It was also recently screened at the 2024 Melbourne International Film Festival and is currently a finalist for the film prize at this month’s 2024 CinefestOZ Film Festival in Western Australia.

THE MOOGAI stars a stellar cast, including Shari Sebbens (The Sapphires, Thor: Love and Thunder), Meyne Wyatt (We Are Still Here), Tessa Rose (Top End Wedding), Clarence Ryan (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga), Toby Leonard Moore (Mank), and Bella Heathcote (Relic, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies). The film is produced by Kristina Ceyton and Samantha Jennings of Causeway Films (The Babadook, Talk To Me) and Mitchell Stanley of No Coincidence Media (We Are Still Here).

Directed by Jon Bell in his feature film debut, THE MOOGAI is based on his acclaimed short film of the same name. This psychological horror intertwines the harrowing history of the Stolen Generations with First Nations storytelling. For Indigenous Australians, the term “Moogai” can mean “boogeyman,” among other things.

The film follows Sarah and Fergus, a young Aboriginal couple celebrating the birth of their second child. However, their joy quickly turns to dread when Sarah begins to see a malevolent spirit she believes is trying to steal her baby. While Fergus, who cannot see the spirit, wants to trust her, he grows increasingly concerned as Sarah becomes more unhinged. The central question becomes: is the child-stealing spirit real, or is Sarah herself the greatest threat to her family?

THE MOOGAI received significant production investment from Screen Australia’s First Nations Department in collaboration with Screen NSW through the Made in NSW Fund and Regional Filming Fund. Additional financing was provided by Spectrum Films, Kojo Studios, Anahat Films, Salmira Productions, and Head Gear Films, with post-production, digital, and visual effects supported by Screen NSW.