The Transfiguration (2016)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Excellent but underrated film

Don't listen to the negative reviews

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This intriguing little film tries to merge various genres into one. What we have is the story of a young black boy living in a one parent household (actually it's his big brother as his guardian) who fantasises to help get him through the days in an otherwise hard life on a violent gang led estate. The dark side is that the boy has an obsession about vampires, which leads him to copy his 'heroes'. The film references lots of vampire movies, and you can see the labels of the videos he watches to get him up to speed on the genre. However, as he begins to kill to ape his heroes, it is uncomfortable. His other escape turns out to be a lovely girl who moves into his building, and he is finding a life beyond his fantasies, but it begins to have an impact on that relationship.This is a low budget but intriguing movie. The odd critic has tried to say it's a copy of Let The Right One In, but it's not. It's a different take on the idea and merges other ideas in.It's thoughtful, emotional and very well acted by the young crew. It stood out, but sadly has gained little attention. Disappointed to see the reaction to it by some, but it's a nice simple gem. Give it a go. It's worth it.

The outcast orphan Milo (Eric Ruffin) is a lonely teenager that lives with his brother in a dangerous neighborhood. Milo is fan of vampire stories and movies and he randomly kills people to drink their blood like a vampire and steal their money. When he meets the depressed teenager Sophie (Chloe Levine), they become friends and spend their leisure time together affecting Milo. "The Transfiguration" is a weird but interesting low-budget rip-off of "Martin" and "Låt den rätte komma in". There is something missing to rate "The Transfiguration" a good film, but it keeps the attention of the viewer until he last scene. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): Not Available

I enjoy Independent films, however the pacing for this particular film was excruciatingly slow and the main character so deadpan and without emotion that at times I felt the need to fast forward in order to get on with the next segment. The soundtrack used during the so called "tense scenes" really had a 50s B movie quality to it, adding to the impression that it was a low budget exercise. No real punch line or moral with the ending and while I did watch it all the way through, the story didn't have any depth to it, the characters were uninteresting and I simply can't recommend it.

Seen at he IMAGINE film festival 2017 in Amsterdam. The story flows all the time and keeps your interest, but overall the dramatic developments are minimal, and the atmosphere embedding the two main topics, violence and social commentary, does not provide for anything new that we haven't seen already in many other movies.The only novel element is that Milo is a vampire, this time not someone who has to avoid daylight, and he also does not sleep in a coffin. Milo lives a more or less normal life with his older brother, who has apparently nothing more to do than watching TV all day long. Milo marks days on a calendar that he has to go "hunting". We saw a handwritten book with rules of engagement, e.g. that the victim must come instead of chasing him, but that was only a small fragment of a heavy stack of paper. We also see him several times bite randomly chosen victims, after which he is always somewhat nauseas, seemingly inherent in the process. How he became a vampire, is left in the dark (no pun intended), and what we see of his brother does suggest that is not something that runs in the family.We see less of Sophie, not even her house from the inside, when she e.g. lets Milo wait for her door when she has to pick up something, very different from her having access to Milo's house and even stays in his room for a few days. Not clear what it all means, if anything. Both walk outside the house like a couple, e.g. holding hands, but there is no sex involved as far as we see, despite of sleeping in the same bed and kissing each other frequently.All in all, if it really was the intention of the film makers to leave us confused, just as confused as both main protagonists are with respect to the world around them, this movie is a success however without a silver lining. It does not make us any wiser through the added elements of social commentary nor does it about violence or NYC's atmosphere, being important topics as suggested by the movie's website but I missed all of it.