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Grafted Review
Image Credit: Matt Grace/Shudder
Loading...Directed by: Sasha Rainbow
Written by: Sasha Rainbow, Mia Maramara, Hweiling Ow, and Lee Murray
Starring:
Joyena Sun – Wei
Jess Hong – Angela
Eden Hart – Eve
Jared Turner – Paul
Sepi To’a – Jasmin
Xiao Hu – Aunty Ling
Ginette McDonald – Sheryl
Gideon T Smith – Josh
Mark Mitchinson – John
Sam Wang – Liu
Mohan Liu – Young Wei
Running Time: 95 minutes
Not Rated
Body horror is having a moment in the sun. The squicky, wriggliest of horror subgenres has traditionally been kept to the fringes of mainstream film due to its focus on the most uncomfortable of topics – corruption of the body – and often the grossest of concepts. But its power to tell stories focusing on a myriad of themes has resulted in some of the most acclaimed films in horror history, and thanks to The Substance it’s suddenly in vogue.
That means that Grafted has come along at an incredibly opportune time. Director Sasha Rainbow’s beauty body horror film, which premieres today on Shudder, may appear to cover similar territory to the Oscar-nominated Substance. But it’s telling a story that is wholly its own, a coming-of-age body horror about cultural assimilation and loss of face wrapped up in dark comedy and slasher themes.
As Grafted opens, a young girl named Wei (Mohan Liu) watches her scientist father (Sam Wang) as he desperately works on his own project developing a new skin graft procedure. The beauty procedure is one that would benefit both himself and his daughter, as they both have sizable purple birthmarks. He tests the graft on himself and, personal science projects in horror being what they are, this rather predictably doesn’t go well.
Years later, a teenage Wei (Joyena Sun) goes to live with her Aunty Ling in New Zealand where she has a scholarship to study medical research at the same university as her cousin Angela (Jess Hong). The new environment is a culture shock for the withdrawn Wei, particularly in comparison to Angela’s more cosmopolitan and culturally Western ideals.
With Ling gone on business for long periods of time, Wei is isolated and bumps up against Angela and her Plastics-like clique of popular girls including blonde mean girl Eve (Eden Hart) and the more sympathetic but meek Jasmin (Sepi To’a).
Wei does well in class and eventually figures out her father’s skin graft – which, she learns in a moment of frantic need, can be used to perform face transplants. That leads her down a dangerous road, particularly as she comes up against her professor (Jared Turner) who wants to use her research for his own purposes.
Grafted is Rainbow’s feature directorial effort, and it gets her off to a strong start. There are a lot of cooks in this kitchen, with the script originally written by Hweiling Ow and Mia Maramara with further development from Rainbow and Lee Murray. In a lot of cases that would result in a scattershot narrative that has too many ideas, or with the most interesting ideas workshopped away into something more palatably bland. That’s not the case here, as the story stays focused on its cultural and beauty themes wrapped into a bloody and often quite funny package.
There’s a lot that feels familiar here, largely by design. Rainbow takes her cues from a wide variety of inspirations from Mean Girls and Eyes Without A Face to Face/Off and May. It’s a wild, heady mix of cinematic sources to pull from, and while it wears those inspirations right on its sleeve Grafted is using them to do its own thing.
That’s not to say there aren’t some awfully familiar elements here. The film is trading on our genre knowledge for a bit of shorthand, and it’s not hard to guess where some elements are going. But Rainbow is largely able to tie the various elements into a cohesive whole, throwing a bit of darkly comedic satire about fitting in and giving the cultural concept of losing face a literal element in the film. Not all the humor lands as effectively as it could and a minor subplot involving a homeless man with heavy burn scars doesn’t quite fit, but when it focuses on the deranged facelift aspect it’s a lot of fun.
The cast can be credited for a lot of that fun. Sun is delivering a compelling performance as the lonely Wei, allowing us to sympathize with her even as she drifts down her murderous road. The face transplant elements also give some of the other cast a chance to give their own interpretations of Wei, which is a lot of fun and allows some of the comedy to come into play. Hong, Hart, and Turner make good antagonists to varying degrees, giving us reasons to cheer for our antihero as she descends.
The final act of Grafted does putter out a bit as it tries to wrap things up, and the climax doesn’t end up being as satisfying as it could be. But even then, the gooey and bloody practical effects work remains strong and smooths out most of the rough edges. It’s a strong debut from Rainbow and a nice bit of face-swapping, delivering horror of body and the mind in fairly enjoyable measures.
Grafted premieres on Shudder and AMC+ on January 24th.
