2024 Chicago International Film Festival Review: Grafted

Sasha Rainbow’s Grafted is a familiar body-horror movie elevated by its excellent direction and lead performance.

Wei (Jess Hong) is a blossoming scientist continuing the controversial, yet innovative research on skin grafting begun by her late father so that she can “fix” the hereditary facial disfigurement. She gets a scholarship to study in New Zealand where she stays with her aunt and mean-girl cousin Angela (also played by Jess Hong). Wei catches the attention of a down-on-his-luck professor, who has his own agenda, and she is mercilessly bullied by Angela and her popular friends. This, along with the obsession with completing her father’s work, ultimately pushes Wei to her breaking point.

Running the same vein as Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, Grafted is a bloody, gory film about the obsession with being beautiful and keeping up with societal norms. Grafted doesn’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to its characters. Wei is looked at as a “freak” among Angela and her friends because of her facial disfigurement, Angela and her friends are a classic “mean girl” clique, with the leader of the group, Eve (Eden Hart), being the meanest, and Wei’s professor is menacing, over-the-top, and sleeping with Eve. We’ve seen these characters in several movies over the years, and in horror movies, we can almost certainly predict their fate. The performances from these supporting characters are fine, but don’t do anything to elevate them to nothing more than cliché mean people.

But how the characters’ fates play out is a shocking and bloody mess and happens for most of the film. A key event in the film pushes Wei over the edge and once there, she cannot go back, and it turns into a snowball of blood, gore, and death that had me squirming in my seat. Hong is spectacular in her dual performance as Wei and Angela. She is most impressive as Wei. She’s able to make us empathize with a character who is doing objectively terrible things. We understand her descent into madness and why she is obsessed with getting this experiment right and we are rooting for her to get revenge on the people who have done her wrong.

Sasha Rainbow has crafted a gory and gross look at stolen identity and beauty standards in today’s society. Though the supporting characters are familiar and mostly one-note, the stellar mix of practical and visual effects and a great dual performance from Jess Hong will satisfy body-horror fans.

Grafted played in the After Dark section of the 2024 Chicago International Film Festival.

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