By: Logan Myers
Feast your eyes, there’s a new slasher film called Thanksgiving that will leave you wanting seconds! Directed by Eli Roth, this film was originally just a “fake” movie trailer parody (also directed by Roth) that was shown in between the double feature film collaboration project Grindhouse (2007), which included Robert Rodriguez’s film Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof. In between those two films were fake movie trailers that paid homage to and imitated the vibe of 1970s-style horror films, one of them being Thanksgiving. After sixteen years since Grindhouse, Eli Roth has finally brought his full vision to life.
This film follows a group of teenagers who live in present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts—which is the site where the first colony of pilgrims settled back in 1620, and the birthplace of the Thanksgiving holiday. The beginning of this film starts out with the overshadow of Black Friday and how it has consumed part of Thanksgiving due to stores opening for shoppers on Thanksgiving night. There is a CRAZY Black Friday sequence that is absolutely brilliant and one of the most entertaining scenes I’ve seen all year. During this scene, there is a tragedy that ensues (this is not a spoiler), and because of the events that take place, our slasher villain is born. Just after seeing that scene alone, I would love to see a horror/slasher film solely based around Black Friday and all of the madness that occurs.
Thanksgiving bleeds inspiration from other classic slasher films such as writer Kevin Williamson’s I Know What You Did Last Summer, which is directed by Jim Gillespie, and Scream, directed by Wes Craven. The Whodunit aspect of this film made it a highly entertaining theater experience for me because I was constantly second-guessing myself as I tried to figure out who the killer was, and how my observations and guesses kept changing because of suspicious things certain characters said or did. It’s mesmerizing when slasher films make the audience uncertain about characters and how this causes their opinions to change on who they think the killer is. This film features many inventive kills, and it was very gory, which is something Eli Roth is known for in his filmography. It was also a nice change of scenery seeing a slasher film set around Thanksgiving itself because there really aren’t that many revolved around this specific holiday (that I know of).
A few issues I had with this film was the minimal character development towards the main group of teenagers, which caused me not to care as much about them when they were faced with danger and conflict. Another issue I had was with the ending; it was a bit anticlimactic, in my opinion, and the villain reveal was not as satisfying as I had hoped it would be. Regarding the writing of this film, there were a few moments in the story that felt a bit messy as I cringed a couple of times because of certain lines of dialogue.
Overall, I think Thanksgiving was a very fun time, and I could definitely see it becoming a cult classic in years to come! I would also love to see a sequel to this because there are a lot of avenues they could take with this story!
Thanksgiving is in theaters now. Go support this film and your local theater! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!