Newcomer Michael O’Shea’s The Transfiguration is a rarity, then, as a determinedly realist horror movie with a lead actor, and supporting cast, of color. Solitary NYC high schooler Milo (Eric Ruffin) is obsessed with vampires; his walls are covered in posters, he’s got a VHS collection that covers everything from The Lost Boys to Nadja, and he keeps an extensive journal about the rules and weaknesses governing fictional bloodsuckers. We’re introduced to Milo as he sucks the blood of his latest victim in a bathroom stall. He then goes home and vomits. This sets up the film’s primary question: is Milo actually a vampire, or has he just deluded himself into thinking that? O’Shea, who wrote and directed, explores this tension patiently.
Like … really patiently. The Transfiguration is in the allusive and low-key tradition of New York-set 90s vampire movies like Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction and Larry Fessenden’s Habit; not only via its sedate pace but in using vampirism as a metaphor for addiction and urban isolation. Fessenden actually makes a cameo, in one of the film’s many overt winks toward the massive canon of vampire fiction (just look at the poster). Every vampire story under the sun gets namedropped, including — yes — Twilight, which Milo dismisses as “not realistic:” realism being his primary criterion for judging vampire movies.
Milo soon meets Sophie (Chloe Levine), and the two start a tentative, tender relationship. Sophie lives on the 9th floor of Milo’s building with her abusive grandfather. Milo and Sophie are both orphans, and they’re drawn to each other through a shared sadness that forms the backbone of the film. They talk about suicide, and their parents, and bullies. Many of their exchanges feel at least partially improvised, the actors circling around a few repeated phrases or ideas, and for the most part O’Shea’s intended naturalism hits home.
To that end, the film barely uses any nondiegetic music. The score by Margaret Chardiet, who records corporeal, grisly noise as Pharmakon, consists exclusively of atonal roiling used to build tension in a handful of scenes. Otherwise the sound design is purely ambient; combined with the bobbing camera work of Sung Rae Cho (Graceland) the film presents a grimy street-level vision of New York City. It’s claustrophobic, leached of color, and devoid of meaningful interpersonal relationships.
Unusually for an Indie Horror Movie™, O’Shea is able to bring The Transfiguration to an affecting conclusion. Too often, horror movies that pick up hype at TIFF or Cannes or wherever end up flaming out in the final act; usually the protagonist goes on a killing spree for one reason or another and fin.
But O’Shea finds a way out of the is-Milo or isn’t-Milo conceit without tipping his hand in one direction or the other. There is no twist. Instead the film stays true to its characters. “I’ve been drawing the sun a lot lately,” Milo says. He is drawn to metaphorical oblivion yet believes that as a vampire he can not die; at least not by his own hand. He doesn’t share the weaknesses of fictional vampires … just their bloodlust, which leads him into desperation. A vampire is a creature that exists by destroying others; destroying itself is the most selfless act it can achieve.
It is worth noting that Michael O’Shea is not black. This complicates the film’s milieu some; it’s set in and around NYC low-income housing, and gang killings, snitching, and racial tensions all factor into the plot. In fact, the climax hinges on Milo’s ability to orchestrate a drive-by suicide. The film doesn’t exploit this setting, necessarily. O’Shea is careful not to dip into caricature: at the risk of speaking heresy, the scenes of Milo getting bullied in The Transfiguration ring with more truth than similar scenes in Moonlight.
No story is “just” about race. Like gender and class, race seeps into everything. Horror movies have dealt with gender and class since their inception, and more bluntly and honestly than any other genre, but head-on confrontation with race runs a distant third: Candyman excepted. Hopefully, between The Transfiguration and the explicit, angry Get Out, we will see horror entering an era of renewed relevance.
Here's the trailer:
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Zach Budgor writes about movies and video games on the internet. Follow him on Twitter.
This article appears in Aug 3-10, 2017.