Grafted plays like one of those projects where the final result doesn’t quite resemble the instructions. It takes the skin-tingling grotesqueness of skin-ripping gore and tries to mesh it with the social horror angle of trying to adapt. It’s a good idea for a film, but it never feels like the two aspects mesh that well, coming off with visible stitches that don’t quite hold.

Wei (Joyena Sun), a promising college student who grew up with a father who specialized in skin regeneration, is trying to prove herself in society and science. Unfortunately, dad’s experiment works a little too well and regenerates skin over orifices, leading to his unfortunate demise. Deciding to good by her dad and his research, Wei takes off from China to live with her aunt in New Zealand. Her expertise in science makes her an ideal college student. But the pressures of fitting in with the other girls and contending with a fame-hungry professor stress out the young scientist. With the world seeming so selfish, she begins experimenting on herself and literally transforms into the people she wants to be.

In terms of gore, Grafted has some good and gooey moments. Scenes of Wei skinning off faces and attaching them to her own are viciously bloody, as are the scenes when the skin starts falling off her. Murder becomes a part of her experiments and she indulges in a handful of weapons, ranging from plastic wrap to power drills. Her revenge warpath slowly grows with a consistent flow of blood and skin scattered across the screen as strongly as the idolized beauty and favorability Wei seeks.

But beauty is only skin deep, and a certain emptiness lurks under the patches of anxiety and brutality. The characters set the stage decently for the people Wei wants to be and the people she wants to get revenge on, sometimes intersecting. But they never ascend past the standard archetypes of this type of story. The biggest antagonist for Wei in this story is the conniving Professor Paul (Jared Turner), who steals research and has sex with his students. He never comes off as slimey as he should be for Wei wants to make this fraud suffer in the worst way possible. His greed for acclaim and lust for the young never goes beyond cartoonish vile levels. He could use more slime in the way that extra blood was added to skin experiments.

The social angle also feels woefully explored with this type of material. Although Wei is looked down upon for being fresh off the boat, not much is explored beyond the smattering of her struggle to make friends and her culture clash with the integrated Angela (Jess Hong). There’s never enough time to feel her plight, especially since her creepy devotion to her father sets the madness wheels in motion far too early. There’s never much of a shock with her progression, approaching her identity-stealing scheme and mad scientist research more as though they were course requirements than an extension of her pain.

Grafted plays as little more than sub-par The Substance. Any greater contemplation on women worried about their bodies or struggling to fit in is ultimately drowned out by half-thought drama and thoroughly-thought horror effects. In the same way that finding a romantic partner requires more than looks, this film could use some more brains to go with its visually stunning displays of dicing up skin like meat at a deli. I enjoy a good dose of gore, but the thought behind all that violence is so lukewarm that the film would either benefit from going heavier on the social decay or the blood. Either way, I’m starving after horror so light.