Want to hear more from the actors and creators of your favorite shows and films? Subscribe to The Cinema Spot on YouTube for all of our upcoming interviews!
Managing editor & film and television critic with a Bachelor's of Arts in English Literature with a Writing Minor from the University of Guam. Currently in graduate school completing a Master's in English Literature.
In an age where Hollywood reanimates classic Universal Monsters, filmmakers inevitably tell the same old story; yet, this past weekend’s new Shudder film reinvents what many may know about the literary figures present in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man. New Zealand’s body horror production, Grafted, takes a Mean Girls narrative and injects a flat-out weird formula for semi-perfection. Given that I, too, live in the Oceanic region, it was nice to discover another gem for the genre. Following Peter Jackson’s Braindead (or, Dead Alive), Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows, and the Philippou brothers’ Talk to Me, this film from south of the equator is bound to be included in the catalog of fan-favorite horror titles.
Grafted is conceived by executive producer Hweiling Ow and is co-written with Mia Maramara. The screenplay is finalized by Lee Murray and Sasha Rainbow and is directed by Rainbow.
In this review, I will discuss Grafted. As this article’s title suggests, no spoilers will be present.
Shudder’s Grafted Synopsis
According to Shudder Press, here is the official synopsis for Sasha Rainbow, Hweiling Ow, Mia Maramara, and Lee Murray’s psychological body horror film, Grafted.
Chinese scholarship student Wei travels to New Zealand to study medical research at a prestigious university. Shy, introverted, and hiding a genetic facial birthmark, Wei is shunned by her social butterfly cousin Angela and her glamorous friends. Determined to change her fate, Wei immerses herself in her late father’s research, working on a revolutionary skin grafting procedure that could cure her deformity. As her experiments take a dark turn, she becomes more dangerous and unhinged, willing to eliminate anyone who threatens her secret.
Shudder Press
Discussion
Grafted‘s goal of being a unique horror viewing experience strikes me as successful. Watching it twice over, the production crew clearly put in the extra effort to piece the elements together. Music composer Lachlan Anderson’s suspenseful scoring alone is such a sweet highlight. Paired with sound designer Bruce Langley’s build-up in a fan’s speed in the opening sequence, the soundtrack instantly creates a stressful atmosphere in Liu Lim’s (Sam Wang) aim to make strides in his work. His daughter inherits this atmosphere and research, committing to break ground on behalf of them both.
I love the upbeat retro score as Angela Murray (Jess Hong) reaches the threshold of putting up with her cousin, Wei Lim (Joyena Sun), along with the frantic scoring as Wei gets desperate somewhere around the midway point of the film. Another scene illustrates a soft composition that invests in almost homoerotic observation, and how it plays out just feels somewhat sincere. Towards the conclusion, the fantastical scoring of Wei at an impasse is neat, too. Although there isn’t much of a tracklist, the inclusion of The Inmates’s “I’m Watching You” makes for astonishing shifts in tone.
The editors’ cuts and transitions are fine albeit rocky. In her introductory scene, Wei’s pulling of a suitcase from underneath her bed in China match-cuts with New Zealand’s Pacific Ocean waves. This indicates her travel from a childhood home to a new one. The ocean waves are seen again in the third act, but it isn’t as seamless. Another match cut involves the film’s “mean girls” walking out of one door and Wei entering through another. This is an okay transition but deserves some tweaking.
The Physicality of Grafted
Moreover, the director of photography Tammy Williams captures the brilliance of the characters with the camera. Visually speaking, the skin grafting isn’t viscerally horrifying. However, as a Shudder horror film, each kill is more or less as inventive as the next one. The framing of Liu’s fate is eloquently tragic. Meanwhile, the framing of one mean girl’s fate is done in different lighting and space. Williams conveys intense close-up shots to emphasize the details of the characters’ appearances. Specifically, the final act exhibits Wei’s final transformations to highlight her goal of reaching total beauty, even if it isn’t truly hers for the taking. Anderson’s scoring and gaffer Fraser McKay’s lighting help wrap things up for the protagonist’s story, sort of like a cocoon closing in on a caterpillar.
Williams’s camera work also benefits via meticulous angling, e.g. outside the Murray residence and inside biochemistry professor Paul Featherstone’s (Jared Turner) home. In the latter location, the camera can be positioned from inside of a hallway, showing both a hallway wall and the entrance to a bedroom. The frame seems like a decent nod to Liu and Wei’s shared issue. Additionally, with video editing involved, Williams shoots an ambivalent farewell of a character leaving the professor’s den. It might be one of the rarer moments that showcases that an outside perspective does matter.
Every now and then, the writers spell out the takeaway morals of the imperfection theme, from billboards to magazine covers. Angela’s “AGED TO PERFECTION” t-shirt is a stylish albeit ironic statement. Costume designer Kyle Callanan does a lovely job of accentuating the characters on screen. Eve Meadows’s (Eden Hart) pink outfits are impressively stunning, an interesting homage to Mean Girls. Production designer/ art director Nathan Taare also makes Wei’s movement through set pieces pleasant to watch.
The Layered Screenwriting
The writers’ Mean Girls narrative is actually so subtle that it’s easy to notice. Wei doesn’t have a “Burn Book”, nor does she make any friendships for humanity’s sake. Her move to an unfamiliar country and butting heads with a trio of girls her age are the main elements keeping Grafted so grounded. Like Cady Heron, Wei is the odd girl archetype in the certain knowledge that she possesses. When introduced as a teenager, she is implied to have a fascination with entomology. Again, this fulfills the logos in the metaphor of Wei’s self-destruction and transformation.
Yet, Grafted‘s original take on combining coming-of-age drama with psychological body horror is incredibly feasible. The film doesn’t look into puberty or womanhood but rather in Wei’s coming to terms with who she is and could be as a human being. Wei’s Aunty Ling (Xiao Hu) is introduced as a businesswoman who sells “excellent concealer products”. While Ling could offer more to the narrative, it’s at least convenient for Wei to get away with grafting others’ faces onto her own. Ling takes Wei to her home in West Auckland, which is under renovation. This, too, is a subtle nod to Wei and her father, whose genetic “flaw” is a facet they need to “fix”.
In making the primary conflict “something really transformational”, the screenwriters understand where the narrative is heading. The three-act structure paces fairly and can be recognized from its divided focus on Wei, Angela, and Eve. There are a few characters that Grafted doesn’t develop much, specifically mean girl Jasmin Leilani (Sepi To’a), Angela’s boyfriend Josh (Gideon T. Smith), and unhoused man John (Mark Mitchinson). The Shudder film could easily flesh these four out and round off to a two-hour runtime. At the same time, though, that would also mean concentrating on too many characters.
Back to Old School
On the surface, Grafted‘s narrative as a whole is a hit or miss for genre fans, precisely in its depiction of body horror. Yet, those who have come to appreciate the classics of 19th-century literature—and/or those same classics adapted for 20th-century filmmaking and beyond—may notice the eponymous icons in Wei’s story. Akin to Frankenstein’s monster being created from body parts being grafted together, the protagonist and her father experiment with grafted skin. Liu specializes in this and skin regeneration and passes that body of knowledge onto his daughter, the ultimate product of his work. The film’s cutest foreshadowing comes in the form of the “mean girls” wearing facial masks for skincare, a detail that might be quite literally on the nose.
Wei’s venture into creating the perfect serum for repairing her facial “flaw” and then having to frequently use it is as important a theme of substance dependence as it was with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. She isn’t quick to anger, but it does help that the young woman wears two faces. More to that point, of the classic icons Wei’s story mirrors perfectly with Wells’s Griffin, the title character of The Invisible Man. In appearance, they both cover their blemishes with a scarf, trying to hide their “selves” from the world. Wei’s notebook full of her father’s research is a clever MacGuffin, paralleling Griffin’s own books in Wells’s novella.
The Crew Behind Grafted
Tammy Williams serves as the director of photography for the Shudder film.
Murray Milne serves as the underwater operator. Matt Grace and Nik Brinkman are the stills photographers.
Fauze Hassen is the editor. Justice Zemke-White, Blandine Massiet Du Biest, Guillaume Arnoulet, and Danchen Qian are the assistant editors.
Lachlan Anderson serves as the music composer. Aeroplane Music Services, Jan Hellriegel, and Wayne Bell do the music supervision.
Bruce Langley serves as the sound designer.
Kate McGill serves as the casting director.
Tim Carlsen is the casting associate. Shadon Meredith, Shervonne Grierson, and Mingjian Cui are the casting assistants.
Elayne Chan serves as the storyboard artist.
Jennifer Ward-Lealand serves as the intimacy coordinator.
Steve McQuillan and Mark Trotter are the stunt coordinators.
In the Second Unit, Peter Burger serves as the director, with Duncan Cole as the director of photography.
Aesthetics
Nathan Taare serves as the production designer/ art director.
Jess Eve Horan serves as the set decorator. Fraser McKay serves as the gaffer.
Kyle Callanan serves as the costume designer.
Tracey Henton serves as the makeup designer.
Jess Hunt serves as the key makeup artist. Tenesee Murfitt is a makeup artist.
Ines Silvera, Julie Bresnan, Justine Conroy, and Paul Dean are the additional hair and makeup artists.
The Cast of Grafted
Joyena Sun portrays Wei Lim, the protagonist of the Shudder film.
Jess Hong portrays Angela Murray, Wei’s Chinese-Kiwi cousin.
Eden Hart portrays Eve Meadows, Angela’s best friend.
Jared Turner plays Dr. Paul Featherstone, a university biochemistry professor.
Sepi To’a portrays Jasmin Leilani, Angela and Eve’s Tongan friend. Xiao Hu plays Aunty Ling.
Ginette McDonald plays Sheryl, the Murrays’ neighbor.
Gideon T. Smith plays Josh, Angela’s boyfriend.
Mark Mitchinson (Power Rangers R.P.M., Power Rangers Megaforce, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy, Ash vs Evil Dead, Evil Dead Rise) plays John, an unhoused man.
Sam Wang portrays Liu Lim, Wei’s late father. Wang is also credited as the voice of Lee, a friend of Paul’s. Mohan Liu plays a young Wei.
Phil Brooks and Andrew Munro appear as Police Officers #1 & 2, respectively.
Luna Costa appears as a lookalike Wei.
Performances and Character Developments
Sun’s role as Wei is vital and well-written compared to those around her. Like her co-stars Wang and Hu, the young actor faces the challenge of code-switching between her native tongue and English. Through Wei, audiences learn a bit more about Chinese culture, such as their sense of spirituality and taste in cuisine. The actor does tremendously at playing the desperate mad scientist archetype that viewers are used to seeing in the classic icons. Wei is too intelligent for her own good, but sometimes, she finds difficulty in reacting wisely to pressure.
Around an hour into the film, there is a clever scene where Wei is faced with responding to multiple inquiries. Set decorator Jess Eve Horan and the writers deserve a lot of credit for Wei’s sense of organization here. Even closer to the end of Grafted, Williams frames an impressively quick three-step move of Wei trying to gain the upper hand on her final victim. This could specifically be Sun’s best scene to watch in satisfaction as she gets back on track.
While not exactly a foil to Wei, Eve Meadows is a galvanizing antagonist. She obviously knows lies from the truth yet acts out of her own self-interests. Hart does a good job at portraying obsession and an even greater job at portraying confident hostility. Eve is written as if Regina George has no humanity whatsoever insofar that it becomes a problem to Wei, a person of color.
Foils
With that said, Wei is also a great subject for a few foil characters. First, there is Angela, who is also at a loss of a father figure. What sets them apart is their differing backgrounds. Angela unknowingly experiences the Chinese diaspora, namely in not knowing her native tongue or understanding rituals. Her father is alive but just out of the picture. Next to that, Angela is more focused on being well-liked by her peers than, to an extent, because of her looks. Hong portrays aggression and awkwardness nicely, whether it’s expressing embarrassment at her Chinese identity or finding her footing in new shoes.
Although not as well-developed as the others, Jasmin is a bare-minimum interesting foil to Wei. She relates to Wei’s being Othered into a box and thus shares some worthwhile qualities. This “mean girl” is the clueless one out of the trio, and it’s meaningful to see Tongan representation on screen. Evidently, she has shame and displays care and compassion when Wei needs them most. In a way, Jasmin is also foiled by John in that she is helpful to Wei whereas he is nearly helpless in his position. Then again, both Jasmin and John demonstrate that Wei can still be loved no matter her physical appearance.
The Central Antagonist
Lastly, Featherstone is an excellent foil in that he is Dr. Kemp to Wei’s Griffin. While he and Wei are both experts in biochemistry, the former has had more experience, especially in already having had an achievement in the field. Yet, the factors in Featherstone’s motives for acting against Wei are unlike the factors in Kemp’s motives against Griffin. The professor does what he does because he is an adult white male acting out of hubris, whereas Kemp’s actions are for self-preservation. For this reason, it could be argued that Featherstone has a bit of Thomas Marvel—in the epilogue of The Invisible Man, to be precise—in him. Simply put, this character is far from a strong source of ethos.
Final Thoughts on Grafted
If we can call it modern Asian gothic storytelling, then Ow, Maramara, Murray, and Rainbow’s Grafted is admirable at representing madness and obsession, domestic abjection, abhuman monstrosity, and the transformative power of faces. By any means, the film is not impeccable, but there is enough here to break down and analyze. Wei has a handful in common with the classic era of monsters. This corroborates Rainbow’s statement—via Shudder’s production notes—in painting “[a] self-aware portrait of what it is to be a victim of society’s cruelty that makes you re-examine a story you thought you knew all too well.” January is off to an acceptable start in 2025 horror, and Shudder has not quite let me down just yet.
4/5 stars
Grafted is now streaming via Shudder!
For more drama, horror, and thriller-related news and reviews, follow The Cinema Spot on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky! Also, follow us on Letterboxd for further feature film, short film, and limited series reviews!
Managing editor & film and television critic with a Bachelor's of Arts in English Literature with a Writing Minor from the University of Guam. Currently in graduate school completing a Master's in English Literature.
