The Transfiguration (2016, Michael O’Shea)
The Transfiguration is a film that literally transfigures itself from a horror movie into a heavyass dark drama on reality; specifically, growing up in and around violence.
The beginning feels a lot like (one of my favorite films) Let the Right One In in terms of exposition–an outcast boy named Milo obsessed with vampirism meets a similarly lone stark white female girl of the same age. Just like the boy in LTROI, he is bullied and fixated on dark deeds, but unlike the boy in LTROI, Milo acts upon much worse. And then this movie slaps you in the face when Milo actually mentions Let the Right One In as one of his fav vampire movies. He says the reason he likes it more than shit like Twilight is because it’s more “realistic”.
The minute we understand why Milo is obsessed with realistic vampirism (spoiler alert–he kills strangers and drinks their blood but obv humans can’t drink that much blood so he pukes it out soon after) is when we also observe that this movie itself has nothing “magical” or vampiric of vampiric lore whatsoever. Or vice versa, heehee!
It shows us Milo’s trauma and perception that his life is doomed (cos damn he bullied in the ghetto 24/7 and his mom killed herself), thus he turns to his rather ~unhealthy~ obsession to cope: killing people and drinking their blood.
We all know that this isn’t going to end well especially since deep down young Milo is aware that he isn’t innately evil, and the way we see the ending play out, whether horror or drama or both, is one of the most morbid, somber, uncomfortable things to watch, and I therefore ruminate on why this movie is so dark and heavy: it reminds us [horror] movie lovers that reality is the real horror, which is why we love to escape from it as often as we can. : (
