The Transfiguration (2017)

The Transfiguration (2017)

IMDB Rating 6.1/10 (as on 18.04.2017)

1h 37min | Drama, Horror

Troubled teen Milo (Eric Ruffin) hides behind his fascination with vampire lore. When he meets the equally alienated Sophie (Chloe Levine), the two form a bond that begins to challenge Milo's dark obsession, blurring his fantasy into reality.

Director: Michael O'Shea

Cinematography: Sung Rae Cho

Music director: Margaret Chardiet

Screenplay: Michael O'Shea

Stars: Eric Ruffin, Chloe Levine, Jelly Bean

IMDB link Here

In ‘The Transfiguration,’ Coping With Bullies and Craving Blood

ANDY WEBSTER

Young Milo has problems. Not only is he picked on by the bullies in the New York public-housing complex where he lives, but he also craves human blood. As if an impoverished adolescence weren’t messy enough.

We never quite learn how Milo (Eric Ruffin of “The Good Wife”) becomes a vampire in Michael O’Shea’s modestly appealing debut feature, “The Transfiguration,” or whether he simply imagines he is one and kills accordingly. But there are clues as to why. Most concern empowerment.

Ms. Levine strives with her underwritten role as a flailing rag doll with a dream. Mr. Ruffin must carry the film, projecting interior activity and suggesting information where the script (by Mr. O’Shea) does not. That he imbues the film with a weight greater than its words is a testament to his skill as an actor. But “The Transfiguration” does have something to say about class and the sometimes raging consequences of economic deprivation. And does so — forgive me — with taste.

Read full review at New york Times

Movie Rating 🌟🌟☆☆☆  

 Downbeat black vampire tale lacks bite

Nigel M Smith

Milo, the black teen vampire at the heart of The Transfiguration, likes his tales about the undead told with a fair amount of grit.

The same could no doubt be said for Brooklyn-born writer/director Michael O’Shea, who laces his first feature with references to George A Romero’s Martin, Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark, Tomas Alfredson’s Let The Right One In, and most boldly, FW Murnau’s Nosferatu. Unfortunately for O’Shea, he does his film no favours by biting these genre classics. Even Twilight - a series Milo (Eric Ruffin) refuses to engage with (“it seems unrealistic”), and one O’Shea probably doesn’t care for - has more going for it.

The Transfiguration is a character study first and foremost, spending all of its time with Milo. Problem is, he’s so opaque that as a protagonist, he’s completely impenetrable. Ruffin holds the camera with his forlorn gaze, but as rendered by O’Shea’s script, his character is inert, only springing to life when he feeds.

The film is at its best in vividly depicting its environs. The rundown Rockaway beachfront that Milo and Sophia frequent, serves as a solemn reminder of the battering the area received in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Queens, as seen in The Transfiguration, is a grim and brutal place - worlds away from the neighboring Brooklyn Lena Dunham envisions in Girls.

Read full review at The guardian

David Rooney

Wide-ranging references to vampire mythology in literature and cinema are scattered throughout writer-director Michael O'Shea's low-key but absorbing first feature, The Transfiguration. But what distinguishes this stripped-down anti-horror film — set amid the housing projects and lonely beachfronts of the Rockaways in Queens, New York — is its absence of the supernatural. While death by bloodsucking is very much a factor, this is actually a subdued, contemplative drama about the lingering trauma of grief and the efforts of an introspective teenager to invent an invulnerable persona to shield and ultimately release him.

Genre consumers addicted to fast-cut thrills and gory excesses are unlikely to remain glued to this unapologetically downbeat film, though its acknowledgement of influences from Murnau's Nosferatu through George A. Romero's Martin and Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark to Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In will stoke some interest in serious aficionados. The core audience is more likely to be admirers of austere indies that bring an unvarnished gaze (and unhurried pacing) to the wounded casualties on the far fringes of metropolitan life.

In that respect, the relatively untrafficked screen setting, a low-income area still somewhat dazed by the physical and economic battering of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, with Manhattan both a subway ride and a world away, adds authenticity. Subtext themes of poverty, race and class are ingrained in the visuals without the need for commentary. And cinematographer Sung Rae Cho's tack of viewing the protagonists in wide-shot exteriors that emphasize their solitude in this environment — particularly the shoreline and boardwalk scenes — adds to the melancholy feel.

O'Shea's storytelling skills sometimes border on the, ahem, anemic, sticking to detached, observational mode when the film could use more muscular forward momentum. But his tenderness toward his characters keeps it watchable. Despite the extreme nature of Milo's secret life — camping out in Central Park to find victims among the bums that wander the grounds at night — in Ruffin's internalized performance he is always a damaged boy alone in his pain. The same kind of unshowy rawness characterizes the work of Levine and Moten, yielding several moments that are understated but affecting.

In an insider nod to horror fans, Lloyd Kaufman and Larry Fessenden make brief appearances in ill-fated encounters with Milo. The bloodletting here is a million miles away from the cartoonish schlock violence of Kaufman's Troma brand, but not entirely unrelated to some of Fessenden's low-budget early horror films, with their focus on human psychology and social milieu over traditional genre elements. Fessenden's long association with Kelly Reichardt as a producer also is relevant, given the acknowledged influence here of that filmmaker's minimalist realism.

O'Shea uses the bursts of droning ambient noise and the somber electronic sounds of Margaret Chardiet's score to arresting effect. But he's less interested in creating suspense or pumping up atmosphere than in exploring the ways in which horror, and its intoxicating relationship with death, can be a paradoxical balm for the more earthly cruelties of life. That makes The Transfiguration a difficult movie to classify, but one with an emotional depth that creeps up on you.

Read full review at Hollywood Reporter