When indie director Michael O’Shea first screened gritty vampire thriller The Transfiguration to a group of people, he got the one reaction he didn’t bargain for.
“Everybody was saying, ‘It’s such a beautiful film.’ In the back of my head, I’m going, ‘Huh? Did I screw up?’” he told Gulf News tabloid!, laughing.
“I murder someone every 30 minutes. There aren’t any melodramas that I know of that murder people every 30 minutes. Just based on that, it’s a horror film. But it’s told in a slow-paced, neorealist style,” he said.
O’Shea’s atmospheric feature film debut screens at DIFF365@Vox in Mall of the Emirates from August 24 until September 6.
It tells the story of troubled teenager Milo (Eric Ruffin), who has a growing fixation with vampirism. Upon meeting fellow loner Sophie (Chloe Levine), his fantasies and reality begin to mix.
Ruffin was only 15 when they began to shoot. He immersed himself in classic vampire films like Let the Right One In; his character had stacks and stack of similar VHS titles. (“I feel like The Transfiguration would be Milo’s favourite vampire film, because Milo’s favourite vampire films are the ones that are most realistic,” said O’Shea.) But despite the central folkloric theme, there was also a humanness that went into the character.
“Milo’s an outcast. I feel like at some point in time, everyone has felt like an outcast. There’s a little bit of Milo in everyone,” said Ruffin, now 17.
SPY CAMERA
The cast and crew shot the film in 24 days on less than a million dollar budget. The result was a spy camera style of filming on the streets and subways of New York, where standers-by had no idea they were being filmed.
“We put the camera across the street where real people wouldn’t see it. We put the actors in those live environments with radio mics, and we’d just send them walking,” said O’Shea.
This was, in part, an homage to 1970s and 1980s horror, like God Told Me To and Maniac, which heavily featured New York City as a backdrop.
It took a year-and-a-half to fund the project. O’Shea had armed himself with three things: a short film titled Milo, which served as a proof-of-concept, a lookbook containing samples of Milo’s notebook and scribbles of how he hunts, and the script.
Even before he secured funding, however, he knew he had to cast his lead actor. The film would ‘fall apart without the right kid’.
“After writing the script, I realised what I’d really done was do a re-write of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which is a film that is held up by [the lead actor’s] performance. I needed that, but in a 14-year-old kid, who’s probably going to be unknown,” said O’Shea.
A BALANCING ACT
He spotted Ruffin acting on the television series The Good Wife and reached out to his agent.
Ruffin read the script and fell in love with it. He took on the project during school break.
“Mike was there to help me a lot. We collaborated on who we thought Milo is. He was very descriptive and clear about what he wanted from the character — it was kind of easy to act out his vision,” said Ruffin.
O’Shea joked that writers cast the actors that make their work sound good.
“Nine out of 10 actors, you’re going to hear them do your writing, and you’re going to go, ‘Oh my god, my writing’s horrible.’ And then Eric and Chloe did my writing, and I was like, ‘Oh, brilliant,’” he said.
The film premiered at Cannes Film Festival last year. For O’Shea, who said he had created the film with arrogance, it was a daunting experience.
“There’s a lot of, ‘I don’t care, I just want to make exactly what I want to make, [expletive] everyone else, I don’t care how people respond.’ Then, you know, we premiered at Cannes in front of an audience of 1,200 people, and suddenly I cared very much how people responded,” he said.
O’Shea continues to be aware that his film isn’t for everyone. But it’s a rewarding experience, both for himself and for the viewer, when the concept is understood.
“It’s a film about Milo, who becomes a very empathetic creature despite the fact that he’s either a vampire or serial killer, or both. That’s the balancing act of the movie. When it does resonate, when we connect with him, that’s when the film does its job correctly,” he said.
Don’t miss it!
The Transfiguration screens at DIFF365@Vox in Mall of the Emirates from August 24.
