The Transfiguration (film)

The film opens with a man in a public restroom who overhears slurping noises coming from the far stall. He sees that the stall has two people in and mistakenly believes that one man is performing fellatio on the other. He leaves in embarrassment. A look into the stall reveals that Milo, a 14-year-old boy who believes himself to be a vampire is actuallydrinking the blood of a dead man, having ambushed the man as he was using the bathroom. Milo then steals the dead man's wallet, washes his mouth, and leaves for his home, public housing in Brooklyn, New York. One home, he crosses a date off his calendar and adds the stolen cash to a secret bag. He habitually watches videos of extreme graphic violence and writes in what appears to be a visual journal. The journal includes an ongoing list of rules that he believes vampires, must follow, like the time of day appropriate to hunt. The next morning he throws up the blood. On the way home, he is confronted by a neighborhood gang who hold him down and urinate on him. As Milo takes a shower, burns on his back are visible. He gets out of the shower and stares at a closed-door before snapping out of it. In the neighborhood, he is mocked by again by the gang. While on a hunt, he meets another 14-year-old named Sophie, who is apparently new to the neighborhood. He helps her with her bags.

The next day, while walking on the beach, he witnesses a group of men drinking beer and taking turns raping Sophie. After they leave he walks approaches Sophie as she is cutting herself. Seemingly in a trance, Milo leans in towards Sophie's bloody arm, but she stops him. They end up talking and drinking. Sophie asks Milo if he has ever contemplated suicide, having done so herself, but Milo cryptically tells her that it is "against the rules", alluding to the contents of his visual journal. Sophie finds him strange, yet endearing, and the return to Milo's house. When Milo shows Sophie a video of lambs being slaughtered, she abruptly leaves. The next day she explains she had seen similar videos and has bad memories associated with them. Home alone, Milo stares at the closed door again. He is often shown watching movies about vampires, or just listening to them without watching. He visits the park where he sleeps beneath a bridge and ambushes a hobo and drinks his blood. He then marks another date off his calendar.

The next day he asks Sophie out for movies where they watch Nosferatu, which he considers a realistic depiction of vampirism. After, Sophie claims Twilight is a better film and suggests he watch or read it. Milo speaks about what he thinks realistic vampires are like. He points out that he believes vampires cannot kill themselves. They talk about their family, revealing both parents of both of them are dead, specifically that Sophie's grandfather beats her and Milo's mother killed herself when he was younger. Milo confides in Sophie that he still doesn't know where her grave is located because his brother, Lewis, will not discuss it. On the way home, they are harassed by the neighborhood gang again. Later, she kisses him before going home. The next morning they visit the grave of Milo's mother, which Sophie tracked down.

The next day, a wealthy young white couple stop their car to ask Milo if he can help them acquire "C" or "molly". Milo agrees, telling the boyfriend to wait in the basement of a nearby for the dealers to come. This location is revealed to be the meeting place of the gang that harasses Milo. Offended at the boyfriend's expectation of drugs, the gang kills him as Milo watches intensely through the window. Having grown worried, the man's girlfriend frantically confronts Milo about her boyfriend's whereabouts, but Milo ignores her. The police pick up Milo and inquire about a recent crime, telling Milo that if he does not tell the police what he knows about the crime, they will tell the neighborhood gang that he is a snitch. The police then escort Milo back home. Having seen this, the gang distrusts him. Sophie, upset that he's been avoiding her, brings Milo the Twilight book and kisses him. At home, Milo remembers walking in on his mother's fresh corpse and drinking the blood from her freshly slit wrists, which Lewis accidentally walks in on. The closed-door at which Milonconstantly stares is revealed to be his mother's room. As Milo leaves to hang out with Sophie, Lewis advises him to be careful regarding both the gang and the police.

Sitting at the Coney Island docks, Sophie and Milo discuss God, and what they would do with a million dollars. She tells him she would move in with her cousin in Alabama. They sleep together. Looking at his calendar, Milo realizes the date for him to quench his bloodthirst has passed without him noticing. Sophie asks to stay with Milo when she escapes her abusive grandfather. After living happily together for a few days, she discovers his journal, notably his instructions to "hunt" and kill. She leaves, shaken. Milo returns home to find Sophie gone, with Lewis explaining that she left without saying anything. Milo leaves her a voicemail asking for a chance to explain. Roaming around the town, he finds a drunk, abusive man and follows him home. He enters his house to kill him but inadvertently finds his petrified young daughter, whom he also kills and exsanguinates. On the way home, he shakes and cries. He contemplates suicide on top of a tall building but does not go through with it.

The next day Sophie apologizes for disappearing. Milo gives Andre, the leader of the gang, a bag of goods stolen from the homes of people he kills, so they can "trust each other again". Milo then visits a police station and turns them in. He buys Sophie flowers and they leave for a day of fun at Coney Island. At night, sitting beneath the docks at the beach, he imagines killing her and sucking the blood out of her neck. Upon departure, he gives her the money she needs to move. She asks him to move with her but he refuses and leaves. At home, he watches a shootout during which the entire gang is arrested.

The next morning, Lewis asks Milo if he heard that Andre's gang had been arrested. Milo feigns ignorance and asks Lewis, who used to be in the army, if he ever killed anyone. Lewis responds that while he had seen many body parts, he never killed anyone. Sensing that something is upsetting Milo, Lewis tells him that whatever he's feeling guilty about pales in comparison to all of the horrible things other people are doing to each other. Milo thanks him, going for a walk, and leaving a voicemail for Sophie asking whether she had left yet. Milo is then immediately gunned down by friends of the gang he had arrested in revenge. Sophie calls him back to no avail and gets on the bus alone. As he is bagged and autopsied, Sophie reads a letter from Milo. In it, he reveals that he watched Twilight, but thought it "sucked", and that he has given vampire suicide some more thought. While he maintains that vampires cannot kill themselves directly, he thinks that a vampire could kill himself if he orchestrated something that he knew would result in death, especially if they knew it was wrong to hurt others. This implies that Milo framed the gang with the intention of killing himself because he knew that he would no longer be able to suppress his desire to kill Sophie. The last shot of the film is Milo's freshly buried casket.

• Eric Ruffin as Milo
• Chloe Levine as Sophie
• Aaron Clifton Moten as Lewis
• Carter Redwood as Andre
• Danny Flaherty as Mike
• Larry Fessenden as Drunk Man
• Lloyd Kaufman as Hobo
• James Lorinz as Detective
• Victor Pagan as Deli Regular
• Anna Friedman as Stacey

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 85%, based on 55 reviews with an average rating of 6.6/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The Transfiguration tells a quieter, more deliberately paced tale than genre fans might expect, but for those with the patience to let it sink in, it offers its own rewards."[4] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average rating of 65 out of 100, based on 16 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[5]

• Official website
• The Transfiguration at IMDb
• The Transfiguration at Rotten Tomatoes