“Wouldn’t Life Be Easier If You Were White?”: Inside a Provocative Race-Swapping Body Horror | Horror movies

IIn March 2021, six Asian women were killed in a mass shooting in Atlanta. Amy Wang, an Asian-Australian writer and director who immigrated to America in 2015, remembers that tragedy well. “This was the first time I felt really unsafe here,” she says. Along with the growing fear, childhood memories resurfaced – internal and external racism and the exhaustion of not fitting in. “I moved to Australia when I was seven and didn’t speak English – it was a difficult time for me,” she admits. And then there was one recurring thought. “There were many times when I would wake up as a teenager and say to myself, ‘Wouldn’t life be easier if I were white?’” So, I turned that past feeling into art.

Art Slash is Wang’s bold first feature film—one whose premise was, by design, completely dysfunctional. An insecure Asian American high school student undergoes surgery at a mysterious cosmetic clinic called Ethnos (logo: If you can’t beat them …be one of them) which makes white people permanently visible. She takes the phrase “I don’t see color” to the extreme: equality is only achieved when we all look the same, and that means whiteness. The surgery works. And then things get complicated.

Winner of the 2025 Feature Film Grand Jury Prize at SXSW, Slanted It mixes dark satire, body horror and coming-of-age drama. Its imprecision is a feature, creating a space to think about societal power dynamics, the immigrant experience, race and body image without feeling lecturing.

“Honestly, I didn’t think the film would be controversial, because it’s very honest to me; it’s the essence of how I felt as a teenager,” Wang explains. We’re speaking via Zoom from her New York hotel room overlooking Central Park, midway through a press tour.

Joan, played by Diddy’s Shirley Chen, has memorized the social architecture of her high school and knows exactly where she lies within it: on the outside. She idolizes the popular girls — their easy confidence, their closeness to the all-American ideal crystallized in the prom queen crown. When Ethnos sends her the promise of transformation, the temptation becomes irresistible. After surgery, Joan turns into Jo, played by McKenna Grace from Scream 7, and life seems easy, but at what cost?

“The basic concept was satirical, but I couldn’t imagine it as a dramatic satire,” Wang explains. “I wanted the movie to feel like Mean Girls at first and then feel like a nightmare. How could I conjure that? Well, through body horror.” “I would say the concept was years before The Substance came out,” she adds, with comedic timing. While both films use transformation as a metaphorical weapon, Slanted operates on the edge of body horror — less brutal, and more concerned with the quiet familial damage that follows.

Mixing genres sometimes fluctuates for this reason, and can be more difficult. However, the film’s most poignant scenes are based on Wang’s memories. “I had a wealth of experiences to draw from, especially the scenes with Jo/Joan and her parents,” played by Fang Du and Vivian Wu. A comedy of cross-cultural misunderstanding turns into something even more poignant: parents who have sacrificed everything in a new country, and their daughter is literally trying to disappear.

Setting the story in high school was instinctive and strategic. The social world of adolescence gives the film’s more absurd moments credibility. “When you’re in high school, everything seems so exciting and dramatic,” Wang says. “I wanted to take the trope of the all-American girl, who is so popular, so desirable, and turn it on its head.”

Grace, although not Asian American, found her own way into the character. “I associated it with bullying, and the feeling of wanting to belong,” Wang says. “She even embraced Mandarin. She used Duolingo and would send me videos of herself working out.”

It’s an improvised line from Joan’s friend’s song “Never Have I Ever,” which lasts longer — “Do you think I’m ugly too?” – A reminder that you can live in the same world as another person of color and have completely different realities. Wang recalls the response from KCRW podcast host Sam Sanders, who told her that watching Slanted made him wonder if he would have had surgery when he was a teenager. Probably not, but he was going to have surgery to become straight. “For me, that’s the whole movie,” Wang says. “It’s about confronting what you’re not comfortable with and bringing it to the surface – it could be your body, your face, or something internal. I don’t think anyone has ever existed in this world without once thinking: ‘I wish I looked different’.”

Wang has been a part of Hollywood since graduating from AFI in 2017, producing the Netflix series The Brothers Sun and writing about the upcoming Crazy Rich Asians 2, which she describes as more colorful and ambitious. Tendency is the other necessary aspect: not the triumph of representation, but the cost of its absence.

She has lived in the United States for more than a decade. What still surprises her? She barely stops. “The drug ads and billboards list all the side effects. I’ll never get used to that.” In a way, this is the most American thing you can think of.

America is her home now, and she is proud of her Asian and Australian identity, especially when so far from home. Adopting a “who cares” attitude that only comes with age, she points out, “It’s really a lifelong journey — finding the specific version of yourself that suits you, that you can be proud of. And I embrace that.” For Wang, Slash is reclaiming her past. “I hope to continue making films that confront and explore causes, and in doing so, help someone else feel seen and feel less judged.”