Grafted is a 2024 New Zealand- made body-horror thriller that examines identity, obsession, and social isolation through the unsettling lens of extreme medical experimentation. Directed by Sasha Rainbow in her feature debut and co-written with Mia Maramara, Hweiling Ow, and Lee Murray, the film offers a stylish yet disturbing look at the mental and physical price paid in the quest to belong. Set in Auckland and shot in both English and Mandarin, it blends science fiction, slasher horror, and tragic character study into a single taut narrative.
Plot Summary
The story centres on Wei, a shy, sharp-witted Chinese scholarship student who moves to New Zealand to finish her deceased father’s work- experimental grafting with a regenerative skin serum. Wei bears the same striking birthmark he had, and her drive is deeply personal: she hopes to refine his formula so she can heal herself and others marked by the same condition.
Upon settling in Auckland, Wei moves into her wealthy aunt’s mansion, sharing space with the glittering, self-assured Angela. While Angela flashes smiles and designer clothes, Wei retreats behind her books, the introvert overshadowed by her cousins effortless poise. At university, that gap only widens; classmates dismiss her, professors overlook her work, and she feels invisible even in lectures where she answers every question correctly. Only Paul, her chemistry supervisor, shows any warmth, yet that kindness soon reveals itself as a tool he uses to advance his own research agenda.
When Wei finally proves her grafting theory-coupling living skin with cadaver tissue via corpse-flower proteins-she assumes discovery alone will earn her respect. Instead, Angela mocks the achievement at a gala, cutting deeper than any comment has before, and a brutal confrontation leaves Angela dead on the ballroom floor. Panic surges, and in a final, desperate gamble, Wei removes her cousins face from the corpse and bonds it to her own using the grafting skill she perfected. That grisly act of survival marks her shift from timid outsider to a dark, reckless figure powered by stolen confidence and a burning need for payback.
Her obsession spirals outward as Wei targets friends, killing and mutilating them to harvest their identity—faces, confidence, and stolen praise. She charms Paul by masquerading as another girl, and when he too disappoints, she bends him into her grotesque collage. By the film’s final act, the original Wei has almost vanished. Slipping into the night with yet another borrowed face, her family and hometown assume only that she has gone missing.
Main Characters and Performances
Wei (Joyena Sun): Joyena Sun anchors the film with a fierce portrayal, charting Wei’s evolution from shy prodigy to shattered, violent anti-hero. Sun’s subtle shifts of tone inspire both sympathy and dread, deepening the weight of her downward spiral.
Angela, Eve, Jasmine (Jess Hong, Eden Hart, Sepi To’a): Each woman personifies a strand of the social success and femininity Wei covets. As Wei dons their faces, the trio also switches accents and mannerisms, impressing with tight, quick-limbed changes in rhythm.
Paul (Jared Turner): Jared Turner plays the classic self-serving scholar who uses Wei’s brilliance to boost his own résumé. His opportunism illustrates the structural obstacles she confronts and, in turn, accelerates her tragic collapse.
John (Mark Mitchinson) A homeless man marked by a severe facial disfigurement, John is the sole character who greets Wei without judgement. His quiet compassion at key moments brings a fragile warmth to the film, and their final exchange stands as one of its most unsettling turning points.
Themes
Body Horror and Identity
At its heart, Grafted explores the body as both blank canvas and unyielding cell. Wei’s yearning to reshape her face symbolizes a deeper war between cultural expectation and personal truth. The physical brutality-skin removals, grafts, slow decay-parallels her spiralling emotional fracture.
The Immigrant Experience
Wei’s journey echoes the reality of countless immigrants and international students who confront loneliness, cultural rupture, and ruthless exploitation. Her longing to belong, to be admired, and to escape erasure warps into violent, literal acts of assimilation.
Obsession with Beauty and Acceptance
Grafted sharpens its critique on societies that idolize narrow ideals of beauty. Wei believes that adopting the features of those around her will grant her love. Instead, each operation drives her farther from reality and from herself, leaving her final form monstrous not in appearance alone but in utter estrangement from identity.
Visual Style and Direction
Director Sasha Rainbow borrows from high-contrast, almost graphic-art palettes to chart Wei’s slow unravelling. Within Wei’s small apartment, shadows pool around stacks of improvised lab gear, half-rodent carcasses, and wilting Petri dishes. Angela’s Toronto bubble, by contrast, gleams with light, laughter, and the effortless polish of Instagram-ready cafés. These clashing backdrops give shape to the emotional drag between Wei’s isolated obsession and Angela’s curated ease.
Rainbow leans heavily on practical effects; flesh peels, muscles twist, and cells blur under a scalpel’s edge in close, nauseating frames. Yet the camera is always deliberate, draping these horrors in a stylized, almost dream-like haze that marks the film as a waking nightmare, not pure gore.
Critical Reception
Most reviewers welcomed Grafted, applauding its ambition, jig-saw prosthetics, and Joyena Sun’s fragile performance. Critics agreed that the picture re-energizes body horror by weaving immigrant insecurity and familial obligation into familiar genre wiring.
A few voices called the film lopsided, flagging slow passages and passages where metaphor overtook plot clarity. Even those reservations acknowledged, however, that Grafted fearlessly pursues images and emotions other films shrug and forget.
Audience Response
Early viewers have described Grafted as deeply unsettling, yet undeniably engaging and intellectually stimulating. Genre devotees applaud its creative premise and heavy reliance on practical gore, while casual moviegoers highlight the film’s strong, relatable characters. Conversations after screenings often pivot to the moral limits of scientific hubris, the steep price of assimilation, and the chilling prospect of erasing one’s core self in the hunt for perfection.
Though the explicit imagery inevitably narrows mainstream appeal, the film is gathering a loyal cult following among fans who crave smart, character-driven horror.
Conclusion
Breathtakingly ambitious, Grafted marries visceral body horror with rich emotional undercurrents, making it an auspicious debut for director Sasha Rainbow and a career-launching role for Joyena Sun. By twisting familiar tropes, the film reframes identity, alienation, and transformation in a manner that feels urgent and culturally grounded.
With its blend of shocking scares and subtle psychological probing, Grafted delivers genre thrills while inviting viewers to consider the costs of belonging in a world that values conformity above all. For anyone who seeks elevated horror laced with disturbing imagery and meaningful ideas, missing this title would be a regret.
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