Jon Bell expands his MIFF 2020 Best Australian Short Film winner into a feature-length horror steeped in the trauma of the Stolen Generations.

Ensconced in a comfortable life with her husband Fergus (Meyne Wyatt, We Are Still Here, MIFF 2022) and young daughter Chloe, successful city lawyer Sarah (Shari Sebbens, The Sapphires, MIFF 2012) is initially sceptical of her Indigenous birth mother’s cultural practices and shuns her heritage. After a difficult delivery with her second kid, however, Sarah is swamped with terrifying hallucinations and eerie visions of a storied child-stealing creature lurking in the shadows.

Having written for TV series such as Redfern Now, Cleverman and Mystery Road, Bell makes his feature directorial debut with this elaboration of his 2020 short film of the same name, which garnered accolades at MIFF and SXSW (Jury Prize – Midnight Shorts) and a nomination at the AACTA Awards (Best Short Film). Driven by robust and resonant central performances from Sebbens and Wyatt, who reprise their roles from the short, The Moogai is rich with symbolism – the pale monster is depicted as two-faced, with long arms evoking the long arm of the law – and rife with pain. It is an unshakeable cry of rage contained in genre form.

“Unsettling and at times utterly terrifying … This allegory is all the more disturbing for the truth that it represents; when deployed properly, there’s nothing quite like reality to make a horror story all the more haunting.” – The Daily Beast