Grafted is a New Zealand coming-of-age film that follows Wei (Joyena Sun), a young immigrant woman who just wants to fit in. Wei, in an effort to rid herself of the scar on her face, continues her late father’s research towards developing a revolutionary skin grafting technique but her preoccupation with this perceived imperfection quickly becomes unhinged. 

Sasha Rainbow’s narrative feature debut tells a poignant story of beauty, blood, and a search for belonging. Unafraid of showing the reality of the world we live in, Rainbow’s creative and trailblazing approach to documentary filmmaking lends itself beautifully to the world of horror. Offscreen Central had the opportunity to talk with director Sasha Rainbow about the inspirations behind Grafted, “coming-of-rage” stories and the creative potential of body horror. 

Vannah Taylor: Your previous work consisted of a lot of documentaries and music videos, so my first question is: why a horror movie? What brought you to this project? 
Sasha Rainbow: It’s interesting because I didn’t go to film school, so my whole creative film journey has been a little bit of an unraveling escapade of finding myself in the stories rather than in the genres. There are these weird through lines that I end up looking at retrospectively and thinking, “oh shit, I keep talking about these same things, thematically, and I didn’t even realize it. So Grafted came to me, it was written by Hweiling Ow and Mia Maramara, two Asian New Zealand women, and the story is so perfect for body horror. It’s literally a psycho-Barbie coming-of-age story and what better way to talk about developing from a kid into a woman than through the experience of the body. It’s not so prepubescent as that sounds, it’s more of a Mean Girls high school story–but what I think I loved about this story is that the body horror wasn’t just tacked on. It was seamlessly blended into the actual journey that the character was going on. It was also just so much fun to make. If you had to make a movie, body horror is the best. 

Vannah Taylor: I definitely picked up on that Mean Girls vibe, but it is also a little Frankenstein and The Wizard of Oz and so many other things, so I wanted to know what specific inspirations you had coming into this and what films inspire you the most? 
Sasha Rainbow: It’s funny because Mean Girls came up after the fact, as well as Face/Off, which is hilarious. I love it because if you say “Mean Girls meets Face/Off,” you’re like “okay, I can get into that.” But for me, actually, I’m a big fan of South Korean horror as well as Japanese horror. For example, Audition was a big inspiration. I think they play with this otherworldliness in a really interesting way, and regardless of whatever language it’s in, it can kind of exist in its own universe. The script already had a lot of satire in it in the way that a lot of modern horror plays with it, like a bit more of a smashing together of genres. I’ve said this before that I just love Get Out. Even though it’s not exactly “horror,” the social satire and speculation definitely inspired me. 

Vannah Taylor: In something like Get Out, as well as what you mentioned in regards to the script, the horror is already there. You almost don’t need to embellish it. In the past, you’ve talked about your other work as being “hyperreal” and I think that is certainly true for this film. None of it is too outlandish, like I put chemicals on my head to dye my hair, I pick at my skin, and so on. I think it is something that most people can relate to, so I was wondering what kind of personal experiences you infused into Grafted as someone who also experienced a coming-of-age as a young woman? 
Sasha Rainbow: I think there are a couple of things… That feeling of being an outsider was easy to tap into. Not knowing how to fit in and having these unrealistic ideals about how I was meant to behave or reach some sort of standard without really knowing what it is. I think that’s very universal. Another thing is, honestly, rage. I reflected a lot on how I felt really pissed off that I spent most of my youth not feeling good enough, not feeling pretty enough, or whatever. I think that was really easy to tap into. The gore and the horror is a beautiful expression of that rage that a lot of people feel. We need to tell these different stories and this was a good space to do it. 

Vannah Taylor: I love that you used the word “rage,” because it is something that I have felt. We have seen an uptick in films that depict this deviant girlhood. “Coming of rage” was literally the tagline for Lisa Frankenstein. We’ve also seen films like Poor Things and The Substance–all of these films that deal with image, identity, and feeling that rage as a result of not being good enough. Do you have any insight, or your own perspective on why we have seen all of these films that coincidentally play on that same feeling? 
Sasha Rainbow: I definitely think it’s a zeitgeist. Why that might be is a little confounding. What we are seeing politically is a backlash to that, so I think that it’s really interesting that these women in horror, and the body horror genre as a whole, are having this moment. It makes sense to me because we have never been able to express that before. We know blood. We know gore. We have to be very in touch with our bodies all the time. Of course this genre works for us, but it doesn’t fit the brief for how women are meant to behave in society and how we have been depicted throughout history. I think we finally got to the point where we have platforms to actually share the truth. One person does it and then another person does it. But there is still so much more to explore, we’re just at the beginning of what body horror can do and the types of stories it can tell. Having a body is an absolute universal truth. So I think that’s it. It’s really interesting to me that when women are owning that narrative of literally bleeding, screaming, and raging on screen, that we have this very misogynistic voice rising back up wanting to quiet us. I think when we look back at this time, it will be clearer, but there’s definitely something going on. 

Vannah Taylor: I loved the use of the corpse flower, as well as Wei’s fascination with butterflies, and bugs that represent rebirth and metamorphosis. Can you talk about those elements? 
Sasha Rainbow: The script, written by Hweiling Ow and Mia Maramara, was already imbued with a lot of symbolism like Chinese mythology and things like that, which I was really interested in. It was a wonderful thing to be able to tap into, in terms of creating the visual world. It was already layered in. For me, a good story is something that you can pull apart and find new layers every time. That symbolism is one of those ways, especially in filmmaking, to really embed a feeling without being explicit about things. It’s there for people who are looking for it. For other people who just want to see some blood and guts, that’s there, too. We took a lot of time to think about it and talk about it and analyze it and make sure it felt organic to the story. That was the key. Wei’s journey had to be at the center of it because you can take people on any kind of a ride but if they don’t care about the character and they don’t feel like they know the character, then it’s not going to be as fun. 

Vannah Taylor: Something else that was amazing about this film was watching each actress step into the character of Wei as she takes each of their faces. So speaking of things that are there for the people looking for it, it was interesting to see that no matter how many times she changed her appearance and changed outfits to take on these different personas, I kept noticing her blue socks. Was that something intentional to tie them all together?
Sasha Rainbow: Yeah, you hit the nail on the head there. We can try as hard as we might to be someone else, but we are always going to carry parts of ourselves. It was about helping connect her to the original Wei and that was one of the things that she just wouldn’t think about. She’s a scientist, not a fashionista. Socks are socks, it’s like her uniform. It was a way to signal that this is definitely Wei and just say that this is her personality. It was so fun to work with the costume designer (Kyle Callanan) to think about what Wei’s version of a cool fashion outfit that Angela might wear would be, and doing it wrong. 

Vannah Taylor: I love that! I loved this film and I am really excited to see what you’ll do next. Do you have any upcoming projects that you think fans of Grafted should anticipate? 
Sasha Rainbow: Whether fans of Grafted will be interested, I’m not so sure. I’m writing a film called Mice, and it’s a prison escape film. It is inspired by my grandfather, who was a political prisoner in the Gulag, but the story is set in modern times. I think it will be really filled with suspense, tension, and the horror of being trapped. It should be quite fun, but definitely a little different. 

Vannah Taylor: Well, that sounds interesting to me! Thank you so much for sharing! 
Sasha Rainbow: Thank you! 

Grafted is streaming now on Shudder.