The Transfiguration
The Transfiguration
| 14 April 2016 (USA)
The Transfiguration Trailers

When troubled teen Milo, who has a fascination with vampire lore, meets the equally alienated Sophie, the two form a bond that begins to blur Milo's fantasy into reality.

Reviews
BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment
MonsterPerfect Good idea lost in the noise
Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful
Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.
billcr12 The writer-director was obviously heavily influenced by the Swedish film Let the Right One In. The story is reversed this time around with a boy as vampire and girl as best friend. The girl seems much more mature and years older than the boy. The Swedish movie is far superior to this one. The kids are fine but the boy sleepwalks through the film. I would recommend the Swedish import and even the American remake with Chloe Grace Moretz. It is one of the few remakes that actually works. The Transfiguration is a pale imitation.
Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "The Transfiguration" is an American 95-minute movie from 2016 and the first full feature film by writer and director Michael O'Shea. The cast does not really include any well-known actors. Actually you could argue if the title of my review is correct as vampirism is a crucial component from start to finish and many known vampire films are referenced from start to finish including the excellent Twilight, Let the Right One In etc. in here, but there are no vampires in the supernatural sense. Actually, the vampire-addicted protagonist felt more of a zombie at times because I kinda felt that he was basically sleepwalking his film through the film, but that's not a negative deal-breaker either as the film still works for the most part. Yes it is somewhat bleak and extremely slow and you probably could have fit it in an hour too, but the atmospheric take and character study of two young people struggling makes more than up for it. That's also why I am a bit surprised about the ending O'Shea picked as honestly it did not feel too authentic to me with the desired suicide explanation and it also really went strongly against everything before that when it comes to the tone of the film. Yes it does include a bit of a real life reference that pulls the boy harshly out of his vampire reality and there the boy's intentions hurt the film at all. A bit of a pity. I am not angry because the central character was killed as I honestly cared very little about him anyway, I am instead angry, well a bit, that they did not go for simpler, more harmonic closure, maybe a moment of harmony and peace or even for the boy living his fantasy with killing and drinking a girl. Almost everything could have been better than what they actually went with. Oh well. It is what it is. Thanks to several good moments and a decent story overall, I still give the film a thumbs-up. Go see it if you like vampire-themed films. There really aren't that many anymore these days.
Michael Ledo Milo (Eric Ruffin) is a troubled teen who grew up hurting animals and is fascinated by watching them die. He believes he is a vampire who must feed on human blood monthly. This has replaced his need to kill animals by killing humans instead and adds a source of income. He meets Sophie (Chloe Levine), another troubled teen, who is abused by her grandfather. She likes to drink and cut herself.The teens are dealing with their losing hands the best they know how, which is not so good. They reject help, except from each other. Milo has an idea what "real" vampires are like and hates "Twilight" (What guy didn't.) In spite of things happening around them all the time, the teens do their best to make you feel their lives are empty by being boring unimaginative characters who lack personality both inside and outside of their quirks. I felt the same as when I watched" Moonlight." The whole thing was rather pointless for me. Not really a horror. More of a drama.Guide: F-word. Implied sex. No nudity.
Paul Magne Haakonsen I quickly read through the synopsis for the movie when I found it in the horror section. The synopsis seemed like it could be an interesting enough movie, and had me believing that this would be a vampire movie of sorts.However, this was not really the type of movie that I had expected it to be. And I am somewhat perplexed about how it ended up in the horror section, because this was not a horror movie at all; it was a drama with elements of horror at the very best.Writer and director Michael O'Shea had come up with a somewhat mundane storyline and one that was rather slow paced as well. That meant that the storytelling wasn't particularly impressive and just trotted on at a very slow and dull pace, making for a less than impressive movie.Milo's obsession with vampires and his constant watching of vampire movies, made for a fun game of trying to identify as many of the movies that he watched as possible, so it was a test of the viewer's knowledge of vampire movies in a way.The acting in the movie was adequate, and it was nice to see new faces on the screen. I do enjoy watching new actors and actresses on the screen in movies, as they have no association with prior characters portrayed in other movies. However, the cast in "The Transfiguration" were struggling against the limitations of the script and storyline, and the movie was suffering from that."The Transfiguration" was a real struggle to sit through, because it was so slow paced and mundane. It took forever for the story to virtually go almost nowhere. This is definitely not a movie that I will be returning to for a second time around, because it was a battle to get through it the first time. And while the movie is running at an average length of 1 hour and 37 minutes it is so slow paced that it feels like way past 2 hours.