Abhiroop Das
Helmed by Austin Vesely, ‘Slice’ is a horror–comedy that charts the changing of Kingfisher town, where a recent murder of a delivery driver has only flared up the usual chaotic environment. Astrid, the dead man’s girlfriend, decides to find out the identity of the perpetrator and take revenge. However, it doesn’t help that the main suspect is a man rumored to be a werewolf, and some supernatural mystery is linked to the killing. As one murder becomes many, journalist Sadie Sheridan joins the hunt for the killer, bringing her research expertise to the case. Unexpectedly, she gets her hands on a plan that could destroy the town and change the world as the town residents know it. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Slice Plot Synopsis
‘Slice’ begins in the town of Kingfisher, where approximately 40,000 ghosts live alongside humans and other mythical beasts. Most of the deceased were once patients at the now-defunct Halcyon Days Sanatorium, and thus their stories span centuries. However, this coexistence between the two communities takes a nosedive when Mayor Tracy relocates the ghosts to an abandoned neighborhood, ironically known as Ghost Town. Things grow more complicated when Sean Hammerschmidt, a delivery driver for Perfect Pizza Base, is killed in cold blood while making a delivery there. With the assailant still roaming at large, Sean’s death raises questions about the neighborhood, setting the stage for a series of increasingly violent events that threaten to unravel an already fragile social order.
Sadie Sheridan, an up-and-coming reporter for the Kingfisher Chronicle, soon finds herself investigating the circumstances surrounding Sean’s death. Meanwhile, the mayor’s speech on the subject gets disrupted by Debbie, who is a member of Justice 40,000, an activist organization campaigning for the rights of the town’s ghosts. The leader, Vera, demands the demolition of the local shopping center that stands atop the mass grave of the former sanatorium. As conflict brews, Detectives Marsh and Bradley begin examining Sean’s past and discover his involvement in a drug operation. This, in turn, brings an earlier series of murders back into focus, particularly those involving delivery drivers from Yummy Yummy Chinese, Perfect Pizza Base’s predecessors. The suspect, a werewolf named Dax, skipped town years ago, but this new string of killings brings him back into focus.
Despite growing unrest among his employees, especially after the death of another deliveryman, Scooter, owner Jack refuses to shut down Perfect Pizza Base. This prompts Astrid, Sean’s former girlfriend, to return to work there and do some investigation of her own. During this time, she, too, eventually learns about Dax, who was recently spotted in Ghost Town, around the time of the murders. Marsh and Bradley eventually track Dax down, but their confrontation in a junkyard takes an unexpected turn when Dax saves Bradley from being crushed. As Dax denies any involvement in the crimes, Astrid eventually tracks down Sean’s ghost, only to discover that his old problems remain unresolved. Before she can make sense of the mystery, however, a mysterious figure stabs her in the back, turning her into a ghost. Meanwhile, Dax escapes custody as well, just as the real mastermind begins the next stage of their plan.
Slice Ending: Who Killed Sean and Scooter? Why?
At the end of ‘Slice,’ it is revealed that the killer is not one person, but rather the entirety of the activist group Justice 40,000, which is actually a coven of witches in disguise. While they spend most of the film pretending to fight for the ghosts, in reality, their grand plan has always been to rule over them and harness their powers to rule over the world at large. In order to do that, they settled on a divide-and-conquer strategy, slowly creating animosity between humans and ghosts to the point of inviting pure chaos. The first step in doing that was to make Ghost Town look like an extremely unsafe place, and this is where they kill Sean, Scooter, and a string of other pizza deliverymen.
The witches’ plan almost works when the town begins to turn on the ghosts and their place of residence, only for Mayor Tracy to unravel it by publicly revealing that the ghosts are not behind the murders. With their momentum now lost, Vera and the other witches kill the mayor and reveal their true identities in a desperate declaration of all-out war. Their real goal with all of this, however, doesn’t get cleared up until Sadie, Jack, and Joe go to the basement of Perfect Pizza Base and discover the ghost of Carl, the former janitor of the Halcyon Days Sanatorium. There, he reveals that the pizzeria isn’t just any other location, but that it is actually built on a portal that leads straight to hell. It is this portal that the witches covet the most, which is why their entire plan revolves around upending the shopping center.
While Vera and the rest of the witches initially claimed that destroying the shopping center would put the 40,000 ghost souls to rest, the reality of things is a bit different. The literal gates to hell can, technically, take all the souls with it, but it will be an unending torment for the ghosts. Instead, the witches’ plan is to use that threat to tame the ghosts and, simultaneously, draw dark energies from hell to strengthen their own ranks. When Jack learns about this, he decides that the only way to stop the witches for good is to blow up the pizzeria, and with it, the portal, but this backfires as the portal opens up, swallowing everything around it and oozing dark energies that the witches intend to feed on.
Is the Portal to Hell Closed? What Happens to the Ghosts?
With the portal opened at last, all hope of Astrid and company winning the fight seems to have withered away. However, the turning point comes in the form of Dax, who returns to the pizza and assumes his werewolf form. While the witches may be powerful, going toe to toe with a mythical beast proves to be damn near impossible, and Dax soon manages to overpower most of them. At the same time, Astrid, Bradley, and Marsh also engage the witches, and the fight ultimately ends with Bradley putting the cuffs on Heather and Marsh shooting Vera dead. With the witches losing their leaders in quick succession, they have no choice but to fall back, and soon enough, the gateway runs out of power and shuts down.
The closing of the portal is only made possible due to the coming together of various people who could hardly see eye to eye. Bradley, for instance, is the one who initially arrests Dax under suspicion of the murders, and yet at the end, the two fight side by side to win the battle. Much in the same way, Marsh starts out with a deep-seated prejudice against werewolves, and the story very consciously avoids an arc where he is proven wrong about the species, but rather, corrects his toxic perspective on what was always a false claim about Dax. As for the werewolf himself, the story begins with him leaving society behind after being wronged by it, only to return with a renewed sense of trust in the people he cares about.
While the portal may have closed for now, there is no guarantee it will not reopen. Though sealed shut, the gate still technically exists, and all it would take is a lot of magical energy, or a proportionate amount of explosive power, such as Jack’s explosion, to force it open once again. From there, hell can very easily consume the ghosts and trap them for all eternity, but that is unlikely to happen now that the secret is out and being carefully regulated. As the ghosts begin to settle back into their old lifestyle, there is a big change that takes place. Instead of accepting society’s oppression and segregation, they learn to fight back for their own freedom, even if it means bending the rules a bit.
Do Jack and Astrid Become Ghosts? What Happens to Sadie and the Others?
Though Jack seemingly sacrifices his life to destroy the portal for good, the final scene reveals that he has returned as a ghost. That’s not all, either, as he also appears to have reassembled a team with the ghost of Astrid, and other dead characters like Scooter, Joe, and Carl. Together, they create a new, ghostly version of the Perfect Pizza Base, continuing their legacy in a new form. Though the incident with the witches seems to have brought forth a lot of chaos and destruction, it changes the perspectives of those who have come out in one piece. For Astrid, who started out the film full of vengeance, this becomes a chance to relax at last and rebuild her life with her ghost buddies.
The ghosts are not the only ones allowed to work at Jack’s new pizza place, as Dax also ends up joining as an employee, proving that he is in Kingfisher to stay. Fittingly, while his previous relationship with the town ended after the Yummy Yummy Chinese controversy, it was reignited with the creation of yet another restaurant. As for Sadie, she is promoted from journalist at the Kingfisher Chronicle to a star television news anchor, acclaimed for pulling the truth from a sea of lies and conspiracies. In general, the town seems to have made a more positive shift, moving away from prejudices about ghosts and instead crafting its own unique relationships with them.
Read More: Slice: Is Kingfisher Based on a Real Town? Is Ghost Town Based on a Real Neighborhood?
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