‘The Moogai’ Reveals The Real-Life Horror of Stolen Aboriginal Children — and Could Be Australia’s ‘Get Out’

variety.com:

William Earl administrator Growing up in an Indigenous Aboriginal family in Australia, nothing was scarier to horror director Jon Bell than the government.

He recalls the “Stolen Generations,” a tragedy that Americans likely know little about. “The government would take light-skinned kids — or just any kids they could get their hands on — and rehouse them,” he said. “It’s a pretty common tool of colonizers to try and take kids and make them convert to this other culture.” Bell opens his new movie “The Moogai” — premiering at this year’s Sundance midnight selections — by putting audiences in the middle of one of these traumatic moments, a flashback in which Aboriginal children at play with their mothers are suddenly pursued by heartless men in suits, hoping to snatch them up.

The kids quickly run into another monster: The titular Moogai, a creature hell-bent on stealing children. The word has several meanings for the Aboriginal people, but most notably, it’s both “Boogeyman” and “white man.” For the Stolen Generation, the fears were the same.

The film then shifts from this historical run-in to the modern day, where a new baby seems to be in the Moogai’s sights. Unfortunately, his mother (Shari Sebbens) is far removed from her heritage after being adopted by white parents and is not eager to take advice from her concerned Aboriginal birth mother (Tessa Rose), whose sister was snatched in the film’s opening.