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Warning: Full spoilers for the film follow.
I went into Slanted with rather limited expectations. The reviews have been middling, but I was willing to take a chance on it, both because I love body horror and because I love a film that grapples with complex social issues. To some extent, Slanted does do that–its story about a young Chinese-American woman who decides to undergo an experimental surgery that will transform her into a White person forever is one that has a great deal of contemporary relevance–but it ultimately isn’t willing to commit to its own bit. It stumbles in a host of ways, not least because it feels pulled in two different directions: on the one hand, its commentary is about as blunt as a sledgehammer, while on the other it never really goes whole-hog on its body horror conceit. The result is a film that’s both muddled and deeply frustrating.
Written and directed by Amy Wang, the film focuses on Joan Huang (Shirley Hunt), the daughter of Chinese immigrants Sofia and Roger Huang (Vivian Wu and Fang Du). Though she loves her father in particular, Joan carries around a deep shame and loathing of her Chinese identity, one that is exacerbated by her desperate desire to be prom queen. Her shame runs so deep, in fact, that when she’s offered the chance to undergo an experimental surgery to turn White, she jumps at the chance, transforming into Jo Hunt (Mckenna Grace). However, the transformation proves to be a double-edged sword, as it not only alienates her from her parents and her best friend but also has unforeseen physical side effects.
In order for a film like this one to really work–or, to put it slightly differently, for it to have real teeth as a piece of social and cultural commentary–it has to be willing to lean into whatever elements it’s playing with. This is particularly true when you decide to play in the genre of the body horror, which is known for its extremes and for its ability to make an audience squirm. For a while, I had hopes Slanted was going to go this route–there’s a quasi-gnarly moment during her hair transplant where we get a few close-ups of the machine pulling out her hair by the roots–but then the film just sort of limply indulges in some subpar body horror imagery, most of which involves Jo/Joan’s face starting to sag. It all leads to the fateful moment when she’s crowned prom queen, only for her once-beautiful visage to appear sagging and wrinkled, leading to her classmates’ revulsion.
In a braver film, this whole sequence could easily have been as horrifying and tragic as in Carrie, where the title character’s final humiliation leads to her self-immolation and that of most of her high school classmates. Slanted, however, chooses to play it safe. To be quite honest, I was very underwhelmed by the physicality of it all, which just felt sad rather than horrifying. I kept thinking…is this it? This is what all of this has been building to? It’s not that I wanted Joan to suffer, obviously, but when you’ve been told you’re watching a body horror film, you expect more…body horror? As it is, it was almost comedic, which just isn’t the vibe I think you were supposed to get from the film as a whole.
It’s especially frustrating that the most horror-inducing moment ends up being the very last frame, in which Jo, filled with remorse, has torn off parts of her White face, revealing glimmers of the girl she was before. One can easily imagine a film where this would’ve been the climax toward which it was all leading, and I’d go so far as to say this approach would have been genuinely horrifying. In my view, the best and most affecting horror films are those with an element of tragedy to them, and it’s hard to think of something more tragic than a young Asian American woman only recognizing the true consequences of what she’s done once it’s too late. As it is, it feels like more of an afterthought, and rather than engendering the emotions associated with horror it just left me frustrated for what the film might have been.
That said, I do think there’s something compelling, and more than a little terrifying about the film’s central premise, which suggests a distressing number of people of color would take the chance to be White if they could. One of the most genuinely disturbing films in the entire film is when we see an entire crowd of BIPOC folks clamoring to get in to see the doctor and get their own surgery. For his part, R. Keith Harris gives a chilling performance as Dr. Willie Singer, who was an Indian-American doctor who perfected the surgery, espousing the philosophy of “if you can’t beat them, be them.” However, as frightening as all this is, it just doesn’t quite gel with the rest of the film, in particular Joan’s desperate desire to be homecoming queen and the just general awfulness of her White peers, which sometimes become more caricatures than real people.
If there’s one thing that saves this film, it’s the performances of Vivian Wu and Fang Du as Joan’s parents. The scenes between Joan and her mother are particularly wrenching, especially since Sofia genuinely loves her daughter and wants to share important pieces of family lore and tradition with her. The fact that Joan can’t see this until too late is far more horrifying than anything that happens to her body after her transformation.
Is Slanted a bad movie? I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. However, it is undeniably a frustrating one, and I kept finding myself wishing it could’ve gone just a bit further, could’ve gone for the throat. Failing that, it could’ve been a bit subtler in its delivery, especially since its central message is an important one. The way that Whiteness–White identity, White skin, White culture–is constantly framed by our society as something toward which everyone should aspire is a problem, and it causes untold damage to BIPOC everywhere. However, while Slanted clearly aspires to Get Out levels of cultural commentary, it ultimately falls flat, leaving us wondering what might have been.
