A24
Throughout the years several rappers have made the transition from a rap career to acting. Sometimes it can be successful like Emimen in 8 Mile or the several films Ice Cube has appeared in since the 90s. I am always excited to watch a movie with a rap star in it since I frequently listen to that genre. Most recently, the rapper Kyle, from such songs as ‘iSpy’ and ‘Playinwitme’ starred in a Netflix movie called The After Party. A24 announced awhile ago that they would be working with Chance the Rapper in a horror movie, which immediately caught my interest. A24 consistently puts out some of the best movies of the year, but they may have just reached a low with Slice.
Slice is an odd movie with many different things thrown into it. The movie opens with a pizza delivery boy being killed on the job. The city searches to blame someone, being werewolves, ghosts, or drug dealers. This small-town harbors various monsters such as ghosts, witches, and werewolves and they all live and work together. Several politicians are on edge and journalist are having a heyday with the situations. Right off the bat that sounds like one of the coolest movies of all time, but it results in a flat movie.
The idea for this movie sounds fantastic but it never reaches its potential. It reminded me of the Disney Channel movie Halloween Town where a variety of monsters occupy the town. In this town, various monster contribute to society such as delivering pizza. Throughout the movie, I forgot that the monsters even played a role in this movie. They were in the background so often that I questioned what the point was even writing monsters into the story. It would have worked the same if everyone were just human. The humans investigating the murders of the pizza delivery boys were focused on ghosts and werewolves as suspects for the murder. With low quality makeup or characters never appearing as who they say they are, the werewolves and witches never seem like a threat to most.
Chance the Rapper’s character appears for the first time halfway through the movie, which I found to be disappointing. The marketing for this movie sold it as a film with Chance the Rapper appearing as the main character, which he is not. Although his screen time was limited, I think he did a great job in the movie. Chance the Rapper’s music career is an impressive one and he is a very talented artist, so it came no surprise to me that he would a fantastic job. Also impressing me was Zazie Beetz, who appeared in Deadpool 2 earlier this summer. I would consider her the main character as she is trying to find out who murdered her boyfriend in the beginning of the film. She is very charismatic in her role and I enjoyed her performance.
Slice attempts to be funny at times, but it comes off as dry. There are plenty of moments where jokes are attempted, but I never found them to be funny. That is a shame because there are many comedians in Slice that I find funny such as Hannibal Buress, Paul Scheer, and Chris Parnell.
This is the kind of B-rated horror film that you would watch at midnight and find the plot just ridiculous enough to stay with it. I was rather disappointed with how Slice turned out. It is a fantastically wild idea that didn’t pan out like I thought it would. With a little more gore and having the monsters appear as monsters and show up a little more throughout the film, Slice could have been a highly entertaining film.
Slice has a run time of 1 hour 23 minutes and is rated R for bloody violence, language, some drug material and nude images.
Share this post
