Sasha Rainbow’s body horror, Grafted, is bound to remind you of Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance; considering the unrealistic beauty standards promoted by the beauty industry, it only makes sense for more and more films, especially in the horror genre, to question the benchmark. Wei, a bright young student, always felt inadequate because of a scar on her face. She had inherited it from her father, who used to be a scientist but had died a gruesome death due to a failed experiment. They believed the scar on their face was an ancestral curse, and Wei’s father had dedicated a significant portion of his life to finding a solution to ‘fix’ their faces. He initially assumed his experiment had been successful when the cells on his face started to regenerate, but it soon went out of his control. The skin grafting procedure accelerated rapidly, and it ended up covering his mouth, and no matter what he did, the skin continued to regenerate. Wei stabbed her father in the face, hoping to make a slit in his mouth for him to breathe through, but it did not work out, and his life came to a tragic end.
Spoiler Alert
What happened to Angela?
As a little girl, Wei enjoyed spending time with her father in his lab. She had taken an interest in science and was keen on making discoveries like her father. Even after he passed away, she continued to be obsessed with flora and fauna. She barely had any friends, and most people around her called her a monster because of the scar on her face. After being granted a scholarship at a university in New Zealand, she went to live there with her aunt, Ling, and her daughter, Angela. Ling was initially hesitant to accommodate Wei at her house, but she eventually agreed to it. After her husband left her, she’d struggled to make ends meet, especially with the constant cost of renovation. She sold beauty products to make money and was barely at home. The minute Wei met Angela, she knew they were different. She hoped that they could be friends, but Angela quite evidently disliked her. Wei was socially awkward, and she was extremely conscious about the mark on her face, leading to low self-esteem. She was envious of Angela, who was friends with the popular girls in class, but whenever she tried to interact with them, they walked away from her.
After spending all her life abroad, Angela had successfully adapted to Western culture and was quite careful about not discussing her roots, fearing that she would stick out. But Wei was proud of her Chinese heritage, and she had built a prayer altar with her father’s photograph in it. After Wei moved in, Angela was a little conscious about inviting her friends. They did not approve of Wei, and she was afraid that they would eventually distance themselves from her as well. Wei kept herself busy at the science lab. She had recently joined as a lab assistant of Professor Paul. He pressured her to make a significant discovery for the university to allot him a grant while he was busy sleeping with his favorite student, Eve, who also happened to be Angela’s friend. Wei worked on her father’s skin grafting experiment, and while initially it did not work, she eventually realized that she had missed a key ingredient—the corpse flower. Wei managed to procure a sample of the rare, pungent-smelling flower for her experiment, and she was pleasantly surprised to learn that it worked. She had successfully created a solution that could instantly repair damaged tissues. But Wei made a mistake; she left her father’s notebook in the lab, and her fame-hungry professor grabbed hold of it in the hopes of creating the potion all by himself and later taking sole credit for it.
By the time Wei reached home, she realized Angela was extremely disappointed in her because Eve had strategically taken a photograph at the lab that made it seem like Wei and Professor Paul were having an affair. Angela refused to listen to any explanation; she had destroyed the altar and Wei was furious seeing it. The two got into a physical fight, and Wei ended up stabbing Angela in the eye. Angela passed away immediately, and Wei had to come up with a solution before Aunt Ling returned home. She used the liquid solution she had discovered to paste Angela’s face on hers. She had literally flayed Angela’s face, removed her own skin, and pasted Angela’s face with the solution. The mark on her face was gone, and she was a whole new person. She pretended to be Angela for a few days, but things got out of control when the skin on her face started to dry up.
Why did Wei murder Eve?
With the missing notebook and her face drying up, Wei was in search of a new victim, and Eve perfectly fit her requirements. As Eve, she could have access to Professor Paul’s personal belongings and find her father’s notebook there. She also had been extremely envious of Eve and had secretly always wanted to live the life of the most famous blonde in class. Eve had also tried to mess up her life, so it only made sense that Wei would choose her to be her next victim. Wei lured Eve to her house as Angela, and when Eve realized that her best friend was about to marry her, she attempted to escape. Eve was not the brightest in class, she ended up hiding in the small water body in front of Wei’s house, and naturally, she could not hold her breath for long. Wei drilled a hole in her head while she was in the water and later dragged her body to the house, peeled off the skin from her face and used it to transform herself.
Wei enjoyed the attention she received in college, but she was also afraid of getting caught. It was evident that Wei was not just a socially awkward science enthusiast, but she also had the appetite to kill for her own advantage. Maybe it was the liquid that had altered her personality or perhaps she always had a thirst for blood deep down. She was thrilled by the idea of becoming an entirely different person and doing all the things that she never got to do as herself. With Angela gone missing and her boyfriend, Josh, dropping dead from a cliff after seeing Wei’s mask literally come off, there were too many loose ends that Wei had to take care of. She first had to get rid of the bodies piling up in her bedroom. She decided to hide them in the ornamental water body within the premises of aunt’s house, and she later resorted to dismembering the corpses to cover her tracks. Her neighbor, Sheryl, was a little suspicious, but she did not have solid evidence against anybody to get the authorities involved.
After handling the bodies, Wei decided to find a way to destroy Professor Paul. She mailed her own picture (the picture Eve had taken of Wei) to the college authorities, and Paul was sacked. But Paul did not have much of a regret; he knew he was close to making a scientific breakthrough that would rattle the world, and he could not wait. As soon as he successfully recreated the liquid, he invited Eve (Wei) to his house to party. Wei searched for the solution and her father’s notebook at his house. While she found the vial, she could not find the notebook. She left the house with the vial, and while Paul was disappointed at first, he was glad that he still had the notebook to make another batch of the solution. Paul was the only person who could’ve guessed what Wei was up to, and he suspected she was involved in some way in stealing the vial. After returning home, Wei removed Eve’s skin. She was tired, but she did not have the option to stop anymore. Her own face was red and covered in bruises and marks, and she wondered if her father would truly be proud of the life she was living. All of a sudden, her only friend, Jasmine, showed up at her house. Immediately after opening her fridge, Jasmine came across Eve’s skinned and decapitated head, and even though Wei did not wish to kill Jasmine, she did not have much of a choice. Wei started to question every decision she had taken so far.
Did Professor Paul die?
Desperate to retrieve his vial and confront Wei, Paul ended up at her house. When he entered the living room, he found Wei seated on the ground in front of the altar. It was almost as if she had given up and was looking up to her father for guidance. Paul asked Wei about Eve, and she simply laughed, realizing that he had figured out her secret. She was enraged when Paul proudly stated how he had discovered the liquid on his own. Wei stated aloud that it was her father who had made the discovery, and Paul must not claim it as his own. While Paul could guess something was wrong, maybe he had assumed that Wei had conspired with Eve to trick him, he was startled when he opened the door of the fridge to get his vial. As he stared into the fridge in horror, Wei injected him with a sedative.
In Grafted’s ending, Wei had lost her moral consciousness, and she was almost living in a trance. She felt euphoric when she had Paul completely under her control. As someone who had always chosen to stay silent and barely react even when she was made fun of, Wei felt immensely successful and extremely happy when she could prove to the world that she must not be messed with and that she too could retort back. Paul could already guess that he was at the point of no return. Wei had flayed his neck and chest and used his solution to regenerate the tissue. But unlike the perfection earlier achieved by Wei, she either used too much of the solution, or the liquid acted up because the corpse flower Paul used in the liquid was not blooming when he procured it. Regardless of the technicalities, Paul had his mouth and eyes covered in skin just like Wei’s father did, and even if he didn’t die of asphyxiation (because of the straw Wei had strategically placed), he would beg to be killed given his condition.
Where did Wei end up?
The neighbor, Sheryl, had witnessed Wei torturing Paul and she ended up running out of the house and immediately informing the police about it. As strange as the entire incident sounded, the police acted on the complaint. After the disappearance of Angela and Josh, the police suspected something was going on at the house. Wei escaped as fast as she could to get away from the police. She headed to the underground railway station, and seeing no other option, she sought help from the homeless man she had spoken to before. When she first arrived in the foreign city, Wei became friends with the homeless man. She believed he could relate to her pain; he too had scars on his face, possibly from burn wounds. But unlike Wei, he never thought less of himself because of the scars he carried. The man readily agreed to hide Wei, and he covered her with the blanket he sported. Immediately after, the vial Wei was carrying broke due to pressure, and the liquid reacted with their skin.
Grafted’s ending is bleak and heartbreaking. Wei and the homeless man were almost weaved together because of the liquid. They had transformed into a monstrous mass with four eyes and unusual placements of mouths, teeth and fingers. Wei’s worst nightmare had come true—in the pursuit of beauty, she had turned into a literal monster who people were afraid of when they passed by her. She had not only destroyed her life but also that of the poor homeless man who simply wanted to help her. Her desire to become conventionally beautiful resulted in her losing her sanity and her identity. Even though she was not behind bars, she was punished in the worst possible way by the solution she assumed was the answer to all her problems. And finally, did the dog survive? As someone who was convinced that Nikkie, the pet dog, would not survive (as it so happens in most horror films), I gladly report that going by the mid-credit scene, the dog was not only alive but was enjoying his best life with Sheryl, an unexpected turn of events!
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