Intensity: 🩸🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed/Co-written by Sasha Rainbow
Self-image, beauty norms, and popularity. Grafted takes all that, mixes it with a corpse flower, and comes up with some murderously gnarly body horror.
Grafted: The Players
- Joyena Sun [debut feature]: Wei, the awkward, brilliant, and intensely self-conscious scholarship student, is new to campus.
- Jess Hong [Netflix’s 3 Body Problem (2024-2026)]: Angela, the not-very-understanding cousin Wei now lives and goes to school with.
- Ginette McDonald [The Rule of Jenny Pen (2024)]: Sheryl, the just-trying-to-fit-in member of the Angela, Eve, Sheryl clique.
- Eden Hart [Netflix’s Sweet Tooth (2023)]: Eve, leader and head Mean Girl™ of the clique.
- Jared Turner [The Convert (2023)]: Paul, the biochemistry professor in an inappropriate relationship and suffering from research funding cancellation.
Grafted: The Breakdown
Synopsis
Wei and her father, Liu (played by Sam Wang), share two things: brilliant minds well-suited for scientific research and an unfortunate facial deformity. A facial deformity that drives them both to extremes in the search for “normality”.
Shortly after her father’s death, Wei leaves her home in China, accepting a prestigious scholarship at a school in New Zealand. Armed with her late father’s research, she’s determined to honor his memory — and cure her crippling lack of self-confidence — by coming up with a revolutionary skin grafting technique.
No matter the cost.
Production
Grafted slithers into the impressive ranks of recent body horror bombshells like The Substance (2024) and The Ugly Stepsister (2025) as if climbing to these heights was easy. While commentaries on society’s idea of beauty aren’t new, they’ve definitely been getting more visceral in recent history, and Grafted pulls no punches.
“Do a lot with a little” could define the indie horror industry as a whole, and Sasha Rainbow‘s debut feature follows that creed to a T. Production levels match that of big-budget projects while respecting the inherent limitations of not having unlimited funds. If this is what she can do on a shoestring budget, look out.
Body horror films, by their nature, always require some exceptionally queasy special effects, and Grafted doesn’t disappoint. The dermatome scene — featuring a medical device used to cut thin slices of skin for grafting purposes (and, yes, I do regret looking that up) — in particular is reminiscent of the infamous cheese grater scene from Evil Dead Rise (2023) and that’s not even the worst of it.
Cast and Story
Often uncharacteristic for a low-budget debut film, Grafted features a cast that fully complements each other. From entitled rich girl to invisible exchange student to ethically challenged professor, there are no weak links. Granted, some of them don’t have a lot of depth, but they all serve their purpose admirably.
Pacing in Grafted occasionally waxes and wanes. Not enough to pull the viewer out of the experience, but it’s noticeable. Of course, then the next body drops, and you’re right back in the thick of it.
Regarding the story itself, it’s a mixed bag. What starts out as a social commentary on beauty and what makes someone “socially acceptable” shifts in the third act to unhinged revenge mayhem. In a good way! But, still. It’s an overt change that requires the viewer to climb on board again. Okay, we’re doing this now. Let’s go.
Summary
Grafted — and I feel like I’ve been saying this a lot lately — is an impressive feature-length debut, especially from a director whose last short film came out six years ago (according to IMDB). It’s viscerally heartfelt, well-acted, and gives plenty of the watch-through-your-fingers moments that body horror is famous for.
I give it an extra half-star for making me yell at the screen for the (in my opinion) The Thing (1982) homage at the very end.
Review by Robert Zilbauer.