Fans of The Substance will probably appreciate this low-budget Kiwi body horror, intent as it is on tearing holes in the human meat carapace in order to question modern beauty standards. Grafted is actually more superficial than Coralie Fargeat’s film in terms of what it says about appearance – but that is somehow fitting and ably concealed by director Sasha Rainbow with a heavy grouting of punky attitude.

Chinese student Wei (Joyena Sun) arrives in New Zealand as an overseas student low on self-confidence, partly because of her facial birthmark. Her father, who also had one, died conducting experimental grafting research; his brilliant daughter – wanting to make him proud and herself beautiful – resolves to pick up where he left off. After she settles in at the house of her cousin Angela (Jess Hong), she gets her opportunity when she is cherrypicked by sleazy lecturer Paul (Jared Turner) to help out in his lab.

Wei’s discovery of the crucial binding agent for skin grafts in the secretions of the corpse flower gives you some idea of where this is heading. Rather than dwelling too much on a psychological sob story, Rainbow allows Wei just cause for the coming butchery by cartoonishly milking the horrors of her social circle; not just the predatory Paul, angling for her father’s research, but also the ghastly anglicised Angela with her contempt for her Chinese heritage, and her Barbie-like BFF Eve (Eden Hart).

Somewhat indebted in its father-daughter setup and visage fixation to 1960 French classic Eyes Without a Face, Grafted doesn’t have the same sense of Freudian trauma. Its multicultural set of Face/Off-style masquerades could be some kind of commentary on what immigrants have to do to fit in – but then again maybe not. The transitions are deftly handled, though, by Hong especially, and the grisly pantomime lands somewhere between John Waters-style abandon and Takashi Miike’s maximum derangement. Some subtext would have been nice, but skin-deep does the job, too.

• Grafted is on Shudder from 24 January.