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| Slice Filming Locations: Is Kingfisher Real and Where Is Ghost Town? |
In Slice, Kingfisher looks like the sort of American town you could drive through without giving it much thought — right up until you learn that 40,000 ghosts have been pushed into one part of it. So, is Kingfisher a real town, and is the film's bizarre Ghost Town based on a real neighbourhood? The short answer is no. Both are fictional creations, although the film gives them enough real-world texture to make you wonder whether Austin Vesely secretly found a very strange corner of Illinois and decided not to tell anyone.
Kingfisher is the fictional town at the centre of Slice, with the story turning its streets into a collision point for humans, ghosts, werewolves and a rather unfortunate collection of pizza-delivery workers. The town is presented as being on the outskirts of Chicago, giving it the feel of a smaller community sitting within reach of a much larger city. That setting is important because Vesely wanted Kingfisher to feel grounded rather than like a completely imaginary horror playground.
The town also reflects Vesely's interest in taking something supernatural and treating it as part of ordinary life. One influence was George Saunders' short story “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline,” which centres on a struggling worker at a Civil War-themed amusement park where actual ghosts are part of the landscape. Slice takes a similarly strange idea and pushes it into a pizza-delivery murder mystery, because apparently ghosts and werewolves were not enough trouble on their own.
Although Kingfisher does not exist, its visual identity was shaped by Joliet, Illinois, where much of the film was shot. The city gave the production something that could pass for a smaller American town while remaining close enough to the Chicago area to fit the story's geography. That balance helped make Kingfisher feel like somewhere with an actual history rather than a collection of convenient film sets.
Joliet also brings a few recognisable details into the film, including references to the Old Joliet Prison. The historic site has appeared in several films and television productions over the years, including The Blues Brothers, Natural Born Killers, Public Enemies and Prison Break.
So while Kingfisher is imaginary, some of the world surrounding it is very much real. The production basically borrowed a genuine Illinois setting and then filled it with enough supernatural nonsense to make the place considerably harder to recommend as a weekend getaway.
The same distinction applies to Ghost Town. The neighbourhood is not a real district in Chicago or Joliet. Within the film's story, it is the area where the town's ghost population has been forced to live after being separated from the human residents.
That fictional boundary becomes one of the most important elements of Slice, because it gives the film a way to explore segregation, exclusion and the treatment of an entire community as though it belongs somewhere else.
That political idea is built directly into the geography. Ghost Town is not simply a creepy neighbourhood where strange things happen after dark. Its existence reflects a system in which supernatural residents have been pushed into a defined space and kept apart from everyone else. Vesely uses the deliberately exaggerated premise to explore ideas about marginalisation without pretending that the town itself is a genuine place on a map.
There does not appear to be one specific Chicago neighbourhood that Ghost Town was intended to recreate. Vesely studied film in Chicago and developed a strong connection to the city, so his familiarity with its streets and communities naturally informed the fictional setting. Rather than copying one existing neighbourhood, Ghost Town works more like a fictional version of a familiar urban environment, with real locations providing the bones and the film's supernatural story supplying the strange bits.
That approach becomes particularly noticeable during the scenes set inside Ghost Town. Existing businesses and locations were adapted for the movie, allowing the fictional neighbourhood to feel lived-in.
Vesely's familiarity with Chicago helped him understand how different parts of a city can develop their own identities, histories and social boundaries. In that sense, the production's real-world locations do some of the heavy lifting before the ghosts even turn up.
Vesely has also connected the way Ghost Town functions to the atmosphere of Twin Peaks, where locations gradually become familiar enough that individual streets, shops and corners begin to feel like characters themselves. Slice uses a similar trick, although its version of small-town familiarity comes with ghosts, pizza shops and a suspected werewolf. It is a slightly more chaotic neighbourhood watch, to put it mildly.
There is also something deliberately funny about how seriously Slice treats its imaginary geography. Kingfisher has its own history, Ghost Town has its own social boundaries, and the residents behave as though all of this is perfectly normal. That contrast is part of the film's appeal. The supernatural elements are not kept separate from everyday life; instead, they are folded into the town's identity until the line between ordinary and bizarre becomes increasingly difficult to see.
From a world-building perspective, that is what makes Kingfisher and Ghost Town work. They are fictional, but they are not vague. Kingfisher feels like a real town because it is anchored to the look and character of Joliet, while Ghost Town feels convincing because the film gives its fictional residents a genuine sense of place. The production did not need to invent an entirely new visual language when real streets, businesses and architecture could provide one.
My take is that making Kingfisher fictional was probably the smarter creative choice for Slice. A real town would have made the premise feel strangely restricted, while an invented place gives Vesely room to turn the whole community into part of the joke. Ghost Town is even more effective because its fictional status allows the film to exaggerate segregation without tying every detail to one specific Chicago neighbourhood.
The result is a setting that feels familiar enough to recognise but weird enough to belong entirely to Slice. And honestly, a town where 40,000 ghosts are confined to one neighbourhood is already asking for trouble. Add murdered pizza workers and a possible werewolf, and local planning regulations are probably the least of anyone's problems.
So, Kingfisher is not a real town, and Ghost Town is not a real neighbourhood. They are fictional parts of Slice, with Kingfisher designed around a Chicago-area setting and filmed largely in Joliet, while Ghost Town serves as the story's deliberately invented space for its ghost population and wider social commentary. The real locations give the film its grounded appearance, but the town's supernatural history is entirely Vesely's creation.
What do you make of Slice's fictional version of Kingfisher? Does the use of real Illinois locations make Ghost Town feel more believable, or would you have preferred the film to lean even further into its strange fictional world?