Film of the Day: "Transfigure" — A Horror That Critics Rated Higher Than "Jeepers Creepers"

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This short film runs just 4 minutes, but in that time it manages not only to frighten but also to make you think: how far can you go when you're trying to conform to beauty standards?

What the film is about

The main character is a girl editing her photo on a laptop. She removes a mole — and in real life, it disappears too. Then she makes her waist thinner — and again, the result shows up in reality.

Then the nightmare begins. Her eyes cloud over, her mouth vanishes, and she's no longer controlling the program — someone or something on the other side of the screen takes control of her.

Viewing experience

The suspense is delivered with surgical precision — through the absence of dialogue, through close-ups, through the protagonist's almost physical detachment from what's happening. And the longer you watch, the more you realize: you're not just watching a horror story, you're staring into a mirror of the social media generation.
Photoshopped image of a girl whose eyes have been erased
Frame from the film "Transfigure"
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Obviously, the film is a commentary on beauty standards pressure. It's a statement skillfully woven into horror without stealing the spotlight.

The special effects are particularly impressive. For a low-budget project, the facial transformation scenes are so seamlessly done that at some point you can't tell where reality ends.

How audiences reacted

On IMDb, the film has a 6.3 rating. That's higher than some full-length horror films with budgets in the hundreds of thousands. Critics, for example, rated it higher than the cult classic "Jeepers Creepers" (which has a 6.2 rating).

Users call the short film "relevant," "painfully truthful," and "visually striking."

One viewer under the username emwee609 wrote: The film has no backstory or explanation of why these events are happening and who's behind them. Instead, we're thrown into the horror atmosphere from the very beginning, and I actually liked that. It's a bold and dynamic approach that works well in the short format. "Transfigure" warns that you can lose too much trying to become someone else. Earlier on zoomboola.com, we told you about the film "The Backrooms" — a horror shot by a teenager that outshined Hollywood.