Review: Slice

From the opening animated sequence of ghoulish color and synth rhythm to the closing pizza commercial, Slice wears its 80’s inspirations emblazoned on the back of its red delivery jacket. It’s self-aware and unafraid to be ridiculous, and best of all it’s very funny.

Slice
Director: Austin Vesely
Rating: R
Release: September 11, 2018 (VOD)

In what’s known as Ghost Town on Kingfisher island, some 40,000 dead souls haunt the homes and streets of a community all but ignored by the police and government. That is until a pizza delivery boy is murdered, and the threat of a werewolf who committed vicious attacks on Yummy Yummy Chinese looms for the pizza place that now fills its lot.

Reporter Sadie (Rae Gray) works to get her scoop on these grisly crimes in typical 80’s fashion, while Astrid (Zazie Beetz ) returns to Perfect Pizza for vengeance against the monster that killed her boyfriend. Wrapped around the duo are a bevy of familiar faces with Hannibal Buress, Chris Parnell, and Chance the Rapper all delivering energetic lines and memorable gags. We have bumbling detectives, drug kingpins, corrupt politicians, pizza boys, and so many more stuffing the film’s unfortunately slim runtime, so several characters sneak onto the screen before disappearing in a fine mist.

The gleeful absurdity that Vesley plays with is Slice‘s greatest joy. Every scene in this Halloween parade of monsters and mystics devolves either into quippy diatribes or good-looking splashes of practical violence. Each twist and double-cross the script offers can be predicted an hour beforehand, but that’s part of the fun. It’s comfortable and familiar, only breaking convention for the sake of gags. It’s a celebration of its inspirations, light and carefree with even death acting as little more than a punchline. The world isn’t bogged by logic or mechanics, and it’s too likeable for its inconsistencies to matter.

Slice is some damn fine delivery. It’s bubbling with cheese and piled high with ghosts, witches, and werewolves. It’s nothing new, and it might run out before you’ve had your fill, but it still hits the spot.