Fans got their first inkling of horror-comedy Slice a couple of years back, with nothing more than a vague description — musician Chance the Rapper stars as a pizza-delivery guy and also werewolves are somehow involved — enough to build up a significant steam of hype. Many, many months on, we’ve finally got our first look at this enigmatic, ridiculous-sounding movie.
Chance the Rapper does indeed star here as Dax Lycander, a former Chinese takeaway-delivery-guy and current werewolf who is fitted up for the murder of a pizza delivery guy. Directed by Austin Vesely, who has also lensed several music videos for Chance, the film is said to be an off-kilter horror-comedy which manages to be both scary and funny at the same time, with Vesely noting Twin Peaks and the films of Paul Thomas Anderson as touchstones.
Hot on Lycander’s trail are Atlanta and Deadpool 2 star Zazie Beetz, as the dead pizza guy’s co-worker, out for vengeance; Stranger Things star and sentient haircut Joe Keery as a hapless local photojournalist; and comedian and film buff Paul Scheer, host of the cult bad movie podcast How Did This Get Made?, as the pizza joint manager dismayed to learn his establishment is built on a gateaway to hell.
Based on this first look at the film, Slice doesn’t appear to be going straight for the jugular in terms of scares, but it certainly looks bloody enough, with some Ghostbusters–style special effects employed to signify the other supernatural elements (I saw at least one zombie, and there was mention of ghosts in Beetz’s voiceover) at work in the fictional town of Kingsville.
It also looks like Chance’s role may be overstated, with Beetz the film’s actual star, hunting for the exiled wolf-man she suspects of killing her colleague. But then again, maybe that’s a fake-out, and the pair will wind up teaming up against the actual evil bubbling beneath the idyllic town’s surface. Erm, not that Slice looks predictable or anything. It’s still a horror-comedy-murder-mystery with werewolves and pizza.
Slice still hasn’t got a release date, but expect it to hit theatres courtesy of A24 later in 2018.
