How exactly is one transformed into one of the creatures? I get that Blackwood painted a mural of his son being transformed, but I didn't quite understand what was going on in the painting. In fact, to me, it looked more like the boy was being sacrificed or fed to them. So how exactly did it work?
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This was neither explained in THIS MOVIE nor the much-superior original (which disturbed me greatly as a kid in the 1970s).
Be glad THIS movie didn't attempt to explain it. They'd come up with something dumb.
As a warped kid in the 1970s, I thought the transformation could involve the body putrefying down into this homonocus form -- though that would take some time.
My next guess, therefore, would be a quicker sense of jolts that would injure and shrivel the body through a series of deformities and mutations that might take several minutes to several hours, down to one of these. But its left to your imagination. My guess is no better than yours.
I suppose you could also, at the magicial act of transformation, merely be changed into one. One second you are about to be transformed -- then suddenly you merely "awaken" to find your new body is a rat monkey thing, your old body inexplicably gone.
All that leftover flesh from the person shriveling down to that size would likely be eaten by the "fairies".
I can imagine them making comments while eating such as, "Mmmm, this used to belong to Tom Cruise.".