Kingfisher is an ordinary town in the suburban Midwest. It is filled with hard-working folks who toil day in and day out to provide for their families in their working-class American lives. Kingfisher also just happens to be the most haunted town in America, and in an effort to allow the living and dead to co-exist peacefully, Mayor Tracy (Chris Parnell) relocates all the ghosts to a nearby location, which is known as Ghost Town. However, the boundaries between the mortal and immortal are blurred when a mysterious serial killer arrives in Kingfisher, slowly killing the employees of the local pizza joint, Perfect Pizza Base. All signs point to Dax Lycander (Chance Bennett), a known werewolf who has recently resurfaced in Kingfisher after being implicated in a series of murders of Chinese takeout delivery people. However, there is a lot more to this, and simply placing the blame on a werewolf seems to be too simple – and one ex-employee (Zazie Beetz) takes it into her own hands after her boyfriend is the first victim of this malicious killer – but how can a group of pizza delivery people take on the forces of evil and come out successful?

Slice is a bit of an odd film, but that seems to be part and parcel of A24, a studio built on the manifesto of providing a platform for daring independent filmmakers to have their voices heard. Slice is a film that could be considered either a dismal failure or a roaring success and making up one’s mind as to which is a challenge and depends on how you view this film. There isn’t any doubt that Slice is a great film – the problem is, whether it is great because it set out to be, and every flaw was chosen specifically for a particular reason, or because it is a film with an original concept that, despite the film around it and its innumerable flaws, is worth the price of admission alone. If there’s nothing else to say about Slice, it is at least audacious, and while it may not be the most well-composed or coherent film, its nothing short of a truly good time.

In order to understand precisely what Slice possesses that makes it so endearing, we need to look at it for what we assume it was trying to be – an audacious B-movie, a throwback to the cheesy horror films of previous decades. The horror genre is one that is constantly evolving, and there are so many films released each year that revolutionize the genre and take horror to places we hardly expect. Even more than this, it is a genre that can overlap with a variety of other genres and themes without it being gaudy or feeling forced. Yet, the result of the genre constantly shifting means that some of the more charming elements of days of yore are ultimately lost, and perhaps the most endearing sub-genre of horror was the monster picture. Slice attempts to bring monsters to the twenty-first century, and for all intents and purposes, it is quite successful – it never promises to be anything other than a cheesy, silly film about monsters and pizza, and added with the improved social commentary, Slice puts a modern spin on a familiar but archaic sub-genre, taking some of the quirks that made it so enjoyable in the past and placing them in a modern context. For the sheer audacity of this film alone, Slice is worth checking out – it has a lot of charm, and it certainly does what it wants to do – but the question is, how effectively does it execute it?

Initially, I wanted to talk about the final act of Slice as being perhaps its weakest point – featuring a fight scene laden with amateur special effects and terrible makeup, one could be misled into thinking this was a film that just bit off far more than it could chew – but if you think of it from the perspective of being a throwback to the horror films of the 1960s and 1970s, its low-budget filmmaking seemed to be far more of a choice than a constraint. Brimming with stilted dialogue, cliched narrative resolution and cheesy humour, Slice is probably the best throwback to these kinds of monster films, particularly because if it was trying to parody them, it does so in a way that is so natural, it never shows off its intention. The film has as much thematic depth as the pizza featured in it as nutritional value, but it manages to be an explosively oddball experience, and I sincerely hope (and truly believe) that this is what the film was going for, because if not, then Slice is not very good in execution, despite having a great concept.

The biggest weakness found in Slice is that it is far too busy – there are so many narrative strands, and they seem to be strung together in a way that is far too hasty and perhaps a little misguided. We are presented with a cast of characters – a vengeful ex-pizza delivery person played by Zazie Beetz, an aloof, elusive werewolf played by Chance Bennett (better known as Chance the Rapper) and a newspaper reporter looking for the next scoop – and throughout the film, none of them seems to reach the pivotal role one would assume they would. It is very clear to see that Slice is made by a novice – it often comes across as being overstuffed and has the appearance of being the product of a late-night brainstorming session by some college-age horror film aficionados. Ghosts (who are actually zombies, as they can be seen and interact with human beings, and can actually do things), werewolves, the occult and witches all interact in this film, and obviously many films have featured a panoply of such themes, when it comes at the expense of a coherent storyline, it just doesn’t work as well as the creators intended it to. Slice is undeniably a creative film, but there is just far too much going on in it for it to succeed as much as its potential would suggest.

The best way to enjoy Slice is to just do so – this is not a film that takes itself seriously at all, and to compare it other horror comedies isn’t the most fruitful activity, because as entertaining as it is, it is an imperfect film and it has countless flaws, most significantly a certain narrative incoherency that just detracts from the great concept and the execution that emulates certain qualities of the genre and playfully pokes fun at the kinds of films enjoyed by audiences decades ago. Slice is a lot of fun and even looking beyond the flaws, there is a charm beneath this film, and it proves to be a scrappy, entertaining B-movie that has a ton of heart and an affectionate disposition. 2018 is a year where we are seeing a revival of movies that hearken back to outdated genres, and instead of trying to bring them into the new era, they’re managing to reignite the joyful artifice that made these kinds of B-movies so entertaining in the first place, and it seems to be working, because we’re seeing movies like Slice and Hotel Artemis become more prevalent, and while they are undeniably imperfect films, they’re a lot of fun and they dare to be different, which is a glowing merit and the precise reason why I would highly recommend Slice – it takes a great concept, and runs with it, and even if it isn’t immediately a success, I have very little doubt this will become a cult classic in the future. It is unafraid of failure, and as a result, it is a success. Not a film for everyone, but for those who like these kinds of things, Slice is an absolute blast and is certainly worth seeking out.