‘Horrible, gory and weird … in a good way’: An Interview with Grafted’s Mia Maramara

ENTERTAINMENT | STYLE

Written by Evie Richardson (she/her) | @evi3m4y | Contributing Writer

Gore, horror, and a hell of a lot of blood. Three things I despise. Three things at the crimson beating heart of Sasha Rainbow’s feature directorial debut, Grafted. Horror is simply not my thing. So, after a quick Google before a screening of the film, I was filled with a feeling of dread. I’m a cover your eyes, flinch at every noise, talk over the whole film kind of person. But, I survived Grafted without burying my head in my hands. In fact, I revelled in every second of it. I loved it. 

When I sat down with Mia Maramara, one of the co-writers of the film, I told her exactly this. Maramara smirked as I sheepishly admitted my disdain for the genre. As the interview progressed it was revealed that our stances could not be more opposite. 

It’s a dreary Wednesday afternoon in Tāmaki Makaurau. As we chat about Maramara’s screenwriting process, she reveals herself as a soft spoken, thoughtful writer. I’m sitting in a dingy box of a room on the AUT campus. A location that mirrors much of where Grafted is set.Grafted is a cautionary tale of deep insecurity. Following the grizzly death of her father, the film’s protagonist, Wei, a young immigrant fresh to Tāmaki Makaurau from Malaysia, grapples with lifelong feelings of rejection. In an inordinate attempt to fit in with her peers and follow in the footsteps of her scientist father, Wei dedicates her time to completing her fathers scientific endeavours. The result? A whole lot of blood, carnage and bodies. Although gory and shocking at times (or most of the film) Rainbow’s creation explores deep and serious issues such as Western beauty standards and underlying discrimination across cultures. All of this delivers a film packed with an overload of shock factor, modern comedy and a gruesome take on classic teen makeover scenes.

Maramara mentions Single White Female, the 1992 psychological thriller and cult classic Mean Girls (2004), when citing inspiration for Grafted. The film also brings The Fly, Frankenstein and American Psycho to mind. As a “girly girl” who simply loves “bloody, horrible, serial killer horrors”, it’s not hard to see and understand where the frenzied explosion of glitter and gore in Grafted emerged from. 

Maramara’s description of herself sits parallel to the tagline of the film itself. As described on the NZIFF website Grafted is: “Mean Girls meets Face/Off”. A striking feminist take on body horror, the film is a bold mutation of horror, comedy and teen drama. Grafted is a fast-paced film that tickles and terrifies. 

Maramara says that the task of fusing these genres wasn’t difficult. “I think those two genres kind of live inside of you as a person… So it wasn't really that big of a thing. Both marry really well into this weird movie… weird in a good way.” 

As we talk, Maramara reveals to me she has yet to see the final cut of the film. But she knows the project inside out. It’s been over half a decade since Maramara took a week off work and sat down in her four person flat armed with just an idea. An 80-page first draft of Grafted emerged 96 hours later from the grisly depths of a “binge” writing session. 

Maramara recalls her writing process to me as she sits at home, where she lives with her three-year-old child. It’s clear that the journey to Grafted’s finished product was anything but swift. 

Although developed by Maramara, the twisted but provocative idea was originally concocted by Malaysian-raised, Tāmaki Makaurau-based Hweiling Ow. Maramara fondly describes her collaboration with Ow as a seamless alliance. 

“It was always sort of Hweiling's project. She had this idea, but she brought it to me because she doesn't normally write. She needed someone to help scaffold it.”

This revelation surprises me. I resonate with Ow after seeing her describe herself online as someone who “hates watching horror films”. But perhaps it’s Ow’s perturbation that has enabled the creation of a film that keeps any viewer engrossed (and a little grossed out), a careful consideration of what really makes a thought-provoking horror. 

Maramara views this as paramount when writing horror, a genre she tends to lean towards in most of her work, such as Albularyo, a dramatic TV special that made her the first Filipino director to obtain a spot on New Zealand TV. 

“I like horror that says something about society.” “I don't find writing horror heavy. Part of the nice thing about screenwriting is that it can't be heavy for other people to really resonate with it, so you have to find a way to get it across.” 

But that’s not to say Maramara isn’t an unabashed lover of all things icky, gory and gross. When asked what parts of the film she felt had her name written all over them, her answer is short and telling. “The horrible gory parts.” she cackles. Beyond this, she tells a more vulnerable tale of drawing inspiration from her and Ow’s own tumultuous teen years. 

She alludes to her own youth and paints the picture of a slightly awkward teen. Minus a propensity for bloody murder, her own experiences are woven into Wei’s personal struggles. 

“I always compared it to like Wei is your cousin who is fresh off the boat and you're really just struggling to connect with. Everything about how she's weird and awkward came from me and Hweiling because we were always very weird and awkward girls growing up. It wasn't very hard to think of ways to not be able to fit in.” 

Beyond the blood, I found Grafted to be a tale of teenage angst and the intense desire to fit in. A feeling I and many other women have felt. “We didn't have to reach far for that stuff.” Maramara said. “It was very enshrined in what we were trying to do. We kinda knew who she [Wei] was right from the start.” 

Shot on location right here in Tāmaki Makaurau, the film captures the student experience that I’m sure most of you are in the arduous midst of. Doleful late nights stuck in shabby labs and poky lecture halls that disappoint all expectations of the American college dream. It’s all there. Nods to the dingy streets surrounding Auckland University's campus prompted an embarrassing amount of over enthusiastic “Oh my god, I know where that is!” moments. One moment where Wei stumbles through the eerie underpass that connects Symonds St brought up the same skin-crawling feelings I’ve suffered there after a late-night study session. 

Although grand on first inspection, the house where Wei has been involuntarily put up with her obstinate cousin Angela is riddled with unfinished walls and windows. Despite its patchy finishings, the house brings the affluent streets of Remuera to mind. But the film isn’t so much an ode to Tāmaki Makaurau as it is to the complex and difficult situation of being an immigrant in a new city. 

Through the film, Wei deals with the complex task of assimilating into a new culture. At one point, we see Wei sitting excitedly at a Yum Cha restaurant. She beams as she perches at a table so large it could host a moon-sized lazy susan. She’s found a slice of home in a strange new city. Her merriment is quickly dismantled by the acidic judgement of Angela and her callous friends. Wei’s situation echo’s Maramara’s candid renditions of her own experiences as an immigrant. 

“Hweiling and I are both migrants. Hweiling moved when she was younger, and me when I was grown up and that was very stark and something I knew first hand. Until this day I have little things where it's like, back home you bring food to the party. Now I have to figure out which group of friends I'm going to and whether they'll find it either weird, or they'll be welcoming of the food I'm bringing, things like that. So it's actually something I'm still struggling with as an immigrant.”

Although I might not be converted to a full-time indulger of the grisly genre, Grafted is a poignant depiction of the female experience. In a festival where only a slither of the films on show come from Aotearoa, it’s also a starkly impressive representation of what we have to offer. In a gory, scary, sticky genre most often inundated with male directors and fans, Grafted is a chance for women to scream both in fear and anger. 

“Women like horror films, we don't always talk about it, but I notice a lot of them are quietly like ‘I really like the part where she was angry and stabbed her husband.’ And we don't talk about it a lot.”

Fresh off its world premiere at the Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival, Grafted will be released in theatres nationwide on September 12.