The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

When I was a cook, people would send their food back to the kitchen sometimes because it didn’t meet their expectations. The same can be said about filmmaking. Movies often fail because of bad marketing. Such is the case with ‘Slanted’. The short trailer and descriptions probably had people expecting a horror/comedy. Trust me. There’s nothing humorous about this film.

If you liked ‘Get Out’, ‘Slanted’ is on another level showing the perspective of ‘Joan Huang’ (Shirley Chen), a Chinese adolescent wishing to be White. Desperate to fit in with her high school classmates, she goes through the gamut of bad decisions trying to fit in. This culminates in undergoing “ethnic modification” which doesn’t just change her skin tone or the shape of her nose but alters her DNA and transforms her into another person(McKenna Grace).

It’s only fitting the clinic where she receives the procedure is tucked away behind an old Afrocentric barber shop. She walks past the sketchy storefront and emerges into a bright, well-lit waiting room where she meets ‘Willie Singer’(R.Keith Harris), a middle-aged White man and the inventor of “ethnic modification”. 

This is probably where the misperception of ‘Slanted’ being a comedy comes in. As ‘Willie’ describes this sci-fi-esque procedure, he has a demented smile which shows up in the trailer. With no context, it looks comedic. Almost immediately after her the procedure her face begins to deteriorate - hence the horror.