Aotearoa-New Zealand is on fire recently with brilliant genre films and debut feature director Sasha Rainbow’s body horror satire Grafted is no exception. Skimping neither on gore, giggles, and righteous kills, Grafted hits the sweet spot between camp and cautionary tale.
In a prologue set in China, little Wei (Mohan Liu) sits in her father’s home laboratory. Dr. Liu (Saw Wang) is a disgraced scientist searching for skin grafting solutions. His experiments are on the arcane and dangerous side, but he is driven to heal his and his daughter’s facial birthmark which are seen as ‘curses from the Ancestors.’ Whether or not he’s a mad scientist doesn’t figure into Wei’s estimation. He’s her loving father and he's going to make them beautiful.
Years later Wei (Joyena Sun) is an introverted and genius level student who is viewed as a burden and ‘monster’ by her remaining family. Taking up her scholarship to “Western University” in Auckland, Wei hopes to continue her father’s experimental work with access to laboratory facilities at the university. She is perhaps hoping for the chance to be accepted by someone – anyone really – for the thoughtful young woman she is. High hopes that soon come tumbling down as she meets her Aunty Ling’s (Xiao Hu) New Zealand born daughter, Angela Warren (Jess Hong) who rejects Wei immediately for her “weird Chinese shit,” and harbours a lot of resentment towards her own mixed heritage using Wei as a whipping post for her sense of parental rejection.
At university (a strange hybrid of American styled high school hallways and tertiary campus) the audience is introduced to the film’s primary players. Cool, beautiful, and mean as hell queen bee Eve Meadows (Eden Hart). Sexist and venal professor Dr. Paul Featherstone (Jared Turner), and the less toxic third in Eve’s coterie of ‘it girls’, Jasmin (Sepi To’a). If Wei stood a chance with them, even without Angela’s resentment, it was immediately blown when Featherstone singles her out for getting 100 percent on one of his exams, beating Eve’s ‘earned’ nineties grade.
Wei’s every attempt to connect with Angela and her friends is rebuffed either subtly or overtly. Wei doesn’t know how to interact with, or be like, the impossibly ‘beautiful’ blonde Eve. She’s never experienced a time where she hasn’t hidden quietly out of sight and observed. Wei aches for acceptance but she’s “weird” coded with her strange clothing, permanent scarf to hide her facial difference, and her reverence for her late father and his work. Aunty Ling travels for her beauty product company. Angela yaps at Wei more often than her horrible little dog Bikkie, and the only person who immediately saw Wei as just a person is a facially scarred homeless man named John (Mark Mitchinson).
Sasha Rainbow and fellow screenwriters Lee Murray and Mia Maramara trust that audiences know the conventions of a “push them too far” slasher well enough that within the first third of the film you’re well aware of who is going to bite the dust (rightfully so) and the fun is working out just how that is going to happen. Wei’s research, after all, is skin grafting. She manages to find the perfect bonding agent in the oozily fleshy huge corpse lily on display in Auckland and she is on her way to perfecting the formula before things start going massively sideways.
Paul Featherstone was always going to steal Wei and Wei’s father’s research given the slightest opportunity – after all he makes jokes about how Rosalind Franklin’s work maybe shouldn’t have been considered all that foundational to the understanding of DNA and he’s sleeping with Eve who he casually insults for being stupid. Grafted isn’t hoping to make Featherstone three dimensional, he’s exactly the dimensions of puffed-up nobodies who fluked it into academia one idea and have been searching for relevance since through power trips. Similarly, Eve isn’t a psychologically rich character either. Angela has some depth to her, but she’s so lost in her rage that she doesn’t notice she’s beginning to fuck with the wrong person as Wei becomes quietly more defiant.
Grafted wears (pun intended) its influences on its sleeve and that’s to its advantage. There’s a bit of Takeshi Miike, a dash of Carrie, some Leatherface references, a sprinkling of Lucy McKee’s May, and the obvious nod to Mean Girls. Rainbow is a playful director and stylist, luring the audience in with the things they know. A big half-renovated mansion as one setting, itself covered in plastic. Bathroom mirrors, loads of scalpels, face swapping, drills and axes. Cinematographer Tammy Williams leans into the retro aesthetic and pulpiness of the narrative to deliver a dream infused blood soaked discombobulation.
Committed performances by Joyena Sun, Jess Hong, and Eden Parker all playing at some point a version of Wei are the backbone of the film. They set up the surrealistic, absurd, and satirical lens as well as the attendant difficulties involved in Wei trying to ‘be’ any of those young women. What doesn’t work as well is the pacing in the film’s middle section which noticeably sags before it picks up again for a neatly bonkers and goopy ending.
Grafted might be a bit muddled in places unsure of where it wants the audience to focus thematically. It is a feminist body horror revenge satire first and a story of obsession, identity, and mental and cultural disconnect second. However, taken on the first layer before peeling the film back, Grafted delivers enough squeamish thrills and effective comedic lobs at how beauty isn’t even skin deep.
Sasha Rainbow is a clever director with a fantastic sense of genre standards and an irreverent reverence to the craft of telling a “crazy girl/mad(dened) scientist” yarn. Grafted is energetic, bold, and a bloody good time.
Director: Sasha Rainbow
Cast: Jess Hong, Mark Mitchinson, Eden Hart
Writers: Lee Murray, Sasha Rainbow, Mia Maramara, Hweiling Ow
Producers: Murray Francis, Leela Menon
Music: Lachlan Anderson
Cinematography: Tammy Williams
Editor: Fauze Hassen