The Slanted Trailer Turns Shirley Chen Into Mckenna Grace In A Body Horror Movie Bound To Stir Up Controversy

Writer and director Amy Wang's upcoming body horror dramedy "Slanted" is almost guaranteed to generate controversy. Shirley Chen stars as Joan Huang, a Chinese-American teenager who decides to undergo a radical procedure to appear white, turning her into the blond-haired, blue-eyed Jo Hunt (Mckenna Grace). While there have been horror films about people being turned white or sucked into appropriative culture against their will, Jordan Peele's "Get Out" and even Ryan Coogler's "Sinners" among them, a young person of color actively choosing whiteness and assimilation is an interesting (and, obviously, potentially upsetting) concept.

Thankfully, Wang has a respectable track record when it comes to blending comedy with other genre elements to tell stories involving Asian-American characters, having served as a writer and story editor on Netflix's mostly well-received but short-lived action-comedy series "The Brothers Sun." (In fact, she was even tapped to write the "Crazy Rich Asians" sequel at one point during that currently-unmade film's development.) Indeed, the trailer makes "Slanted" look equal parts funny and horrifying, with creepy white people promising happiness if you just join them and some hints of serious body horror. It looks like a lot of fun, but the movie's early reviews are, unsurprisingly, a mixed bag.

The early reviews that've emerged for "Slanted" since its premiere at the 2025 South by Southwest Film & TV Festival (SXSW) are pretty divergent, and though the film is sitting at an 86% on Rotten Tomatoes as of publication time, the "rotten" reviews are extremely critical whereas some of the "fresh" reviews are wildly celebratory. Hoai-Tran Bui of Inverse wrote that "Slanted" is "a strong idea undercut by clumsy and heavy-handed execution," lamenting that the film is "by no means the Asian answer to 'Get Out,'" while Zachary Lee of RogerEbert.com argued that what "Slanted" may lack in subtlety, it makes up for in sheer feeling, writing that it's "cathartic to see rage so singular and justified on-screen."

"Slanted" looks like it's mixing tropes from high school comedies with gross-out and gooey horror satire in the vein of "The Substance" and "Starry Eyes." Whether or not that resonates with audiences has yet to be seen, but folks can check out "Slanted" for themselves when it hits theaters in the U.S. on March 13, 2026.