Writer-director Amy Wang’s debut feature, Slanted, starts with a feeling everyone recognizes—the desperate ache to fit in—but quickly spirals into a biting, body-horror satire of the American Dream. It is a timely exploration of the young immigrant experience, wrapped in the plasticky sheen of Eurocentric beauty standards.
Slanted centers on Joan Huang (Shirley Chen, “Dìdi”), a Chinese American teen whose singular dream is to be crowned prom queen. However, her deep-seated insecurities convince her that the crown is only attainable if she looks like the blonde, white girls of prom court’s past.
The film opens with a much younger Joan (Kristen Cui) on her first day of school in America. As she peers out the car window, she is bombarded by a landscape that defines “American” through a lens of consumerism and hyper-sexualization—from a Starbucks parody called “Freedom Beans” to a “Smiles Jr.” billboard featuring scantily clad women selling cheeseburgers.
Joan’s otherness is exacerbated once she arrives at school, where, during the Pledge of Allegiance, a classmate mocks her by pulling at the corners of his eyes; at lunch, her peers recoil at the smell of her food. It’s a rough first day, but when she’s reunited with her dad later that evening at the local high school where he works as a janitor, she accidentally stumbles upon something magical: prom. There, she watches a blonde, white girl crowned queen as her peers cheer her name. In that moment, her obsession is born. She solidifies a narrow perception of what it means to be beautiful—and what it means to be American.
By the time we meet teenage Joan (Chen), that obsession has become a haunting. Her bedroom is a shrine to blonde icons, and her first appearance on screen shows her wearing a clothespin on her nose to slim it while watching a social media tutorial on makeup, culminating in her using a phone filter to make her appear white in a photo.
It is this digital mask that makes her a target for Ethnos, a shady cosmetic surgery clinic that promises to “fix” her. With prom season approaching and her best friend’s (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, “Never Have I Ever”) campaign posters failing to gain traction, Joan is desperate. Ethnos offers a radical, non-invasive experimental surgery that will permanently make her white. Their pitch? “If you can’t beat them, be them.” Without telling a soul, Joan undergoes the procedure, emerging as “Jo Hunt,” now portrayed by McKenna Grace (“Regretting You”).
The transformation yields immediate, albeit hollow results. As Jo, she is met with the smiles and male attention she never received as Joan. At home, however, the horror is visceral. Her parents (Vivian Wu and Fang Du) are shaken to their core; they are forced to watch as their daughter literally erases her heritage and identity to satisfy a standard that was never meant for her. Joan becomes unrecognizable to them—and eventually, to herself.
With her new skin, Jo quickly ascends to the school’s in-crowd, inching closer to the crown, but the film constantly asks: at what cost?
The performances in “Slanted” are its greatest strength. Vivian Wu and Fang Du bring a heartbreaking authenticity to Joan’s parents; you can feel the weight of their disappointment and grief as they face the erasure of their child. Shirley Chen and McKenna Grace also deserve immense credit. Despite looking like two completely different people, the mannerisms and emotional beats are so consistent that you never doubt the person inside is the same.
While “Slanted” has earned comparisons to “The Substance” and “Mean Girls,” it sits somewhere in the middle. It lacks the extreme, visceral gore of the former and the high-speed comedic caliber of the latter. For a film marketed as body horror, it’s quite light on horror, reserving its most traditional genre elements for a jarring final act.
I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that, as a white male, I am not the primary demographic for this film. However, that didn’t make the satire any less effective. The film pulls no punches when poking fun at U.S. culture and white privilege. While I could laugh at the absurdity of the “Freedom Beans” world, there were undeniably uncomfortable moments—especially as one of the few white people in the theater. One scene featuring a YouTube-esque music video titled “It’s Good to Be White!” hits differently when you are the only one in the room who actually holds that privilege.
“Slanted” isn’t a perfect film. By the time the credits roll, I wish Wang had explored the consequences of Joan’s choice with more depth; her eventual regret feels more grounded in physical side effects than a true reclamation of her heritage. Nevertheless, it remains a solid, engaging illustration of the pressures facing young immigrants. “Slanted” is a prime example of why representation matters, holding a jagged mirror up to the problematic identity of being “American.”
