Slanted
Slanted
Starring Shirley Chen, Mckenna Grace, Fang Du, Amelie Zilber
Directed by Amy Wang
After moving to America when she was a young girl, Joan Huang dreamed of becoming prom queen after finding her way to a senior prom in her school. Ten years later, now-teenage Joan (Shirley Chen) has never lost that desire, but also knows that being the only Chinese person in her school comes with severe disadvantages - no one talks to her, her only friend is fellow outcast Brindha (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), and all she sees is white people getting everything, including the school's main girl Olivia Hammond (Amelie Zilber). After a severe shunning from Olivia and her herd, Joan answers an ad from the mysterious company Ethnos that will transform her skin to white, permanently changing her appearance and making her just like everyone else. She undergoes the surgery and emerges as Jo Hunt (Mckenna Grace), and is instantly caught in Olivia's popularity gravitational pull, to the chagrin of her parents (Vivian Wu and Roger Huang) who don't know their own daughter. Though claiming to be permanent, Jo experiences her skin starting to sag and peel, threatening her newfound popularity and opportunity to reach the dream she's always dreamed of.
There's so much wrong with "Slanted" that could've been right, but writer and director Amy Wang (who wrote the script based on her own upbringing) played it safe so much it diminished any shocking moments that the movie could've delivered. It lazily meandered its way through its runtime, with actors who read their lines but do very little else, and tries to interject body horror into the proceedings but makes it as gross as cutting your fingernail. There is no excitement to be had, it rips off better movies, and it's a shockingly terrible film that the often enjoyable Mckenna Grace helms.
Maybe I don't understand the premise because I'm one of the white people that this movie makes fun of, with billboards advertising how great it is to be white while passing stores like "Prayers & Ammo." This movie shoves in your face that it's great to be white, and has no subtly to it, leaving us sitting in our high chairs as they spoon-feed us what we're supposed to think. It's an insult to the audience and a waste of our time, especially considering other movies that do it way better.
Although labeled as a horror, this is more a coming-of-age tale that takes its theme and somehow makes things even worse in the end. Joan struggles with fitting in, and I'm glad I'm not in high school now with social media being what it is, but it's so cliche it's laughably bad. She hates being Asian in an all-white school, and undergoes the permanent transformation and becomes the new "it" girl without learning any lessons. She loves who she is now, and is only hindered by the fact that her face is literally falling off. She's mean to her former friend, she abandons her heritage, and becomes someone totally different to fit in, without feeling remorse about it until, as I mentioned earlier, her face literally begins sagging. Only then does she realize the error of her ways, which, again, doesn't come off as genuine.
The movie rips off several movies that tackle the themes in this movie better. "Mean Girls" has the Plastics, the snooty white girls that everyone idolizes, and here the lead Plastic is Olivia Hammond's Amelie, a social media influencer who is just a shadow of a shadow compared to Rachel McAdams. She is a stock character through and through, and has no depth to her character, even when Wang tries to throw in a curve ball.
The classic Stephen King novel "Carrie" is also parodied here, as Joan's main goal is to become the prom queen, with the film's climax occurring on prom night. Sadly, you won't find Joan manifesting any psychokinetic powers and getting her revenge on the mean kids here, but rather a lackluster conclusion that you see coming a mile away.
"The Substance" is one of this decade's most impactful horror movies that focuses on aging beauty and becoming someone different, and it's obvious Wang took creative license from that movie. From changing actresses to making her more beautiful and appealing, it's almost a slap in the face to Coralie Farfeat's masterpiece. Shirley Chen comes off as irritating and annoying as Joan, while Mckenna Grace seems to have a gun trained on her offstage demanding she perform, coming off as pained through most of the movie.
Finally it takes the inverse of "Get Out" by highlighting how good it is to be white as opposed to "Get Out's" theme that white people want to be black. Much like "The Substance," this is a slap in the face to Jordan Peele's masterpiece as well.
Essentially trying to tell an important lesson about self-acceptance, "Slanted" instead slants its theme by offering a trope-filled snoozefest that never really accomplishes its goal, but instead seemingly goes the other way in showing the vapid nature of the main character and her inability to learn an actual lesson.
The Score: D-
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