This is how it looks when the movie is Slanted (CREDIT: Bleecker Street/Screenshot)

Starring: Shirley Chen, McKenna Grace, Vivian Wu, Fang Du, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Amelie Zilber

Director: Amy Wang

Running Time: 104 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: March 13, 2026 (Theaters)

Slanted slides into theaters with a devilish little premise: what if there were a medical surgery that would allow people of color to become white (in every possible way you can fathom)? For a business model like this to work, there would have to be people willing to erase their ethnicity for the sake of making a racist world easier to live through. Ergo our teenage protagonist Joan Huang (Shirley Chen), who gets the surgery and re-introduces herself to everyone as the white-presenting “Jo Hunt” (McKenna Grace). Slanted isn’t quite as unimpeachable as the similarly premised The Substance, but it is successful enough that I was still grappling with its repercussions days later. And that second life – that feels like home.

Grade: A Full Bowl of Potatoes Covered in 75% Sour Cream