Grafted (2024)

Premise: Wei is a chinese exchange student that wants to finish her dead dad’s life work, some miraculous grafting technique. Incidentally, she could use it to get rid of this birthmark on the side of her jaw and finally look beautiful! Even though she already is, no matter what the New Zealand cast of Mean Girls appearing on this movie think. Add to that equation a horrible, horrible piece of crap/teacher that is trying to take advantage of Wei and…
Yes, I’m forced by law to say it’s a huge coincidence The Substance and this movie were released the same year. Kind of like Volcano and Dante’s Peak or Armageddon and Deep Impact or Die Hard and Scrooged.
Under 90 minutes? Tsk, almost but no.
Do they say the title? Yes they do!

One sentence review: Wei’s existence is basically Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes all the time so to be honest I can’t help feeling a bit sad for her, it just keeps getting worse and worse.
Rating: I had a lot of fun with this, even if at times you were like “hey, wait, that MUST be a dream sequ-oh. oh, okay, moving on” because of the tone changes or who cares. I really liked the three main actors.
A simple way to improve it: I wish it went a bit further with the gore and body horror, to be honest. I guess the budget allowed for what it allowed and that is okay because it really is able to say what it wants to say, but it could have been a lot more disgusting at times.
Alternatively I want more direct references to Takashi Miike’s filmography. I mean:

It’s only missing Wei winking at the camera after striking the pose.

Trivia about the IMDb trivia:

After [character’s] death, her undamaged eye changes in the degree it is closed in between the two shots.