With the rise and normalization of cosmetic plastic surgery, horror media involving plastic surgery — Mika Ninagawa’s “Helter Skelter,” or David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future,” to name a few — feels more real and horrifying than ever before.
The film “Slanted,” directed by Amy Wang, is a body horror-comedy that grapples with racism, beauty standards, and self acceptance. These are all themes which layer on top of each other to create a unique yet overt commentary.
The film follows a Chinese American teenager, Joan Huang, who is experiencing internalized racism and self hatred, and is getting increasingly absorbed in taking filtered selfies that make people appear white.
Huang then receives an offer from the company who created the filter, inviting her to undergo plastic surgery that will make her look white. Huang chooses to recieve the surgery without hesitation. The surgery impacts the ways her white peers interact with her, leading to an increasingly disoriented perception of herself.
The setting of the movie is very contemporary, dealing heavily with trying to fit in both on social media and in school. Despite being labeled as a horror-comedy, it doesn’t dwell too much in either genre, and instead generally feels more like an emotional coming-of-age story.
While engaging with valuable themes, the film’s approach to these topics often feels surface level, particularly due to the thin plot and dialogue that do not properly develop the main character or reoccuring themes.
Given how much internal struggle the protagonist faces throughout, internal dialogue would have been a compelling addition. The performances are lacking overall, and often feel artificially overdramatized. This, in addition to the way the plot is handled, gives the impression that the film is not doing enough to emphasize the sadness and horror associated with what the main character is doing.
Additionally, the film is not particularly interesting in terms of cinematography. Which is especially surprising for a body horror film, which has the potential to concentrate on filming gorier scenes in a more interesting way. From the beginning of the film, the audience sees how the character’s exposure to racism at a very young age has stuck with her throughout her life.
Certain details, such as the many posters of white female celebrities above Huang’s bed, both place the story within the present age and highlights how media has influenced her life and childhood.
Overall, the commentary feels very blunt and surface level. There are many valuable ideas worth exploring, but they are not probed sufficiently throughout the film.
However, the film is not without its well executed elements. The themes of wanting to fit in, and sacrificing your identity in the process, are uniquely portrayed as it merges these themes with issues surrounding social media and unrealistic beauty standards.
As plastic surgery is becoming more widely normalized, the fact that Huang does not even think twice before undergoing the surgery speaks to this. Through growing up on social media and using filters, she has grown to feel insecure about her physical appearance. The scenes where the protagonist struggles to feel like herself around her new friends and in the mirror are particularly memorable and emotional.
Through emphasizing aspects of modern culture and influences like social media, the film highlights the perpetuation of Eurocentric beauty standards and the horrific effects they can have on young girls. Although, it still falters in terms of how it uses the horror aspects in order to convey the message, as well as the complexities that the experience of insecurity brings to young girls.
“Slanted” does address several complex themes that are important to highlight in film, but it falters in its use of body horror as a medium, angle, and overall shallowness through which it approaches them.