The Transfiguration

released 21 april TBC | 97 minutes

Director Michael O’shea Cast eric ruffin, Chloe levine, dangelo Bonneli, andrea Cordaro

The Transfiguration is a strange beast. A slowburn indie arthouse vampire flick that somehow made it into the Un Certain Regard category at Cannes, it’s a fanboy love letter to the history of the vampire movie, an out-and-out, deliberate rip-off/homage to Let The Right One In, but also a horror-in-hiding that rather refuses to embrace the genre it’s referencing.

Eric Ruffin is Milo, an isolated, bullied, orphaned black teen living in Queens with his elder brother. Obsessed with vampire movies, he spends his time checking out old VHS copies of classics, watching gruesome animal videos online and sporadically turning feral himself, murdering and drinking the blood of random victims. He also begins a romance with a troubled girl in his apartment block.

This is the directorial debut of Michael O’Shea, who’s clearly a fan of a certain type of vampire film. The Transfiguration keeps its influences in plain sight, directly referencing Martin, Near Dark, Nosferatu and Let The Right One In (Milo also discusses how he doesn’t like Twilight because he thinks it’s unrealistic). Sadly it rather pales in comparison to them. A quiet character study of broken outsiders in the inner city, The Transfiguration is moody and tense but, for a vampire film, rather bloodless. Penny Archer