When a pizza delivery driver is murdered on the job, the city searches for someone to blame: ghosts? drug dealers? a disgraced werewolf?
For a horror film, “Slice” was definitely interesting but not exciting! The feel is a typical ’90s horror theme which involves a fast food restaurant, a ton of young people, a weird town full of ghosts and a reporter trying to figure it all out. However, this movies has so many things going on at once, it doesn’t give full attention to the plot.
Let’s start with the beginning. The opening credits are way too long and I know it has the essence of the older style but I think with the short attention span of this generation, it definitely should be a lot shorter, or at least at the end. Here is what you are in for: The story takes place in a town called King Fisher where the dead and living co-exist; A delivery guy named Sean (played by director Austin Vesely), who works for a pizza place called Perfect Pizza, gets murdered at one of his deliveries. We later find out that Sean was actually delivering some drugs instead. Then we are introduced to a character who used to work at Perfect Pizza named Astrid (Zazie Beets) who apparently was in a relationship with Sean. When she finds out of his murder, she returns to work at Perfect Pizza in an attempt to find out who murdered Sean.
Sadie (Rae Gray) hears about the murders and attempts to unravel the case. Meanwhile, we have protestors who are blaming the incident on ghosts while they distract the public from a secret political scandal they have going on with Mayor Tracy (Chris Parnell). Sadie discovers that there was a similar string of murders they called the Yummy Cuisine Murders that was happening with Chinese delivery guys. This leads us to a werewolf named Dax (played by Chance The Rapper). Is he the cause of the murders? Is he a good guy or a bad guy? These are all the questions everyone wants to know because he shows up at the murder scene and works for Yummy. Oh, there is this drug dealer named Big Cheese (Y’lan Noel) who is a suspect as well. As more employees of Perfect Pizza are killed, we see more back story about the protestors who turn out to actually be witches! And by the end of the film, you find out who has been doing the killing and why and you are glad the movie is over.
I thought the film had some original ideas but they weren’t strong enough. I didn’t completely believe the relationships between the characters, especially Astrid and Sean. There wasn’t enough backstory between them for her to have the passion she did to want to risk her life finding out who killed him. The dead and living aspect was cool but as soon as people were killed they were alive again but considered dead. Too many scenarios within the movie, too long to get to the main plot, the werewolf character was a bit weak for me. I think the film tried. It had some funny moments and it was a great idea, I just wished it was clean and strong from beginning to end. I do, however, look forward to seeing more from the director in the future. Not the best but I think it’s worth seeing.
Available on DVD January 29th
