What a perfect movie to put on while everyone celebrates this foodie holiday! Slashing prices for Black Friday. Slashing turkey meat and canned cranberries. Slashing high schoolers for being terrible people overall. Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving really focuses on coming together as friends and families to figure out who the John Carver mask-clad villain is before everyone dies a gruesome death. Gobble gobble!
After a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy, a mysterious Thanksgiving-inspired killer terrorizes Plymouth, Massachusetts – the birthplace of the infamous holiday.
Thanksgiving, IMDB
For me, there are two types of people: Halloween people and Christmas people. I am obviously a Halloween person. It’s funny to me when people fall outside of these two categories, as the characters in this fictional story out of Plymouth, Massachusetts do. Their obsession with Thanksgiving is hilarious, especially considering its not-so-gracious history. So it’s almost par for the course that groups of terrible people are once again terrorizing others and ruining what could be a great time to come together as a community. History tends to repeat itself!
Similar to the start of Krampus, we see the breakdown and aftermath of a deadly Black Friday rampage. People are scalped by shopping carts. Others are trampled and cut up by broken glass. It is utter chaos — but a great and quite jarring start to a horror movie. Eli Roth, famous for his blood and gore, did not disappoint. Thanksgiving then gets into the meat and potatoes of the film — the slasher aspect. People involved in the riot are hunted down one-by-one by a masked man, coming to a head when the remaining survivors are all gathered for a festive and gruesome holiday meal.
I’m probably going to keep referring to Krampus because there are a lot of similarities with this. First of all, Thanksgiving does the whole “we’ve lost the real meaning of the holiday theme.” No problem with that. The Black Friday incident was great and provided a reasonable explanation for the ensuing murders. The characters are all just… so hateful (as in, I hate all of them). No one has any redeeming qualities, even when they try to. While Krampus had characters that, deep down, were just people trying to make it, Thanksgiving‘s cast felt like super stereotypes. It’s not necessarily a bad thing — we definitely want to see people die in a slasher — but you lose some of the emotion when a character with no actual personality or function outside of “jock and girlfriend” dies. I just didn’t care as much.
I also had a bit of a problem with the finale when we find out who the John Carver murder mask is. Thanksgiving did an excellent job keeping me guessing because there were plenty of suspects that I could easily see being the villain. I won’t spoil the ending, but it felt way out of left field. I mean, yeah it surprised me, but also it didn’t feel like the best reveal. I also had trouble imagining what was going on inside these character’s heads because they all had ample time to just leave Plymouth, but didn’t. They also didn’t learn their lesson at the end. Did they really reflect on why they were targeted? No. Krampus‘ “lesson” was a full thought and not just a “be better” kind of situation. I bet that if there was a Thanksgiving 2, we’d have the same problem with the same people.
All that’s to say is that Thanksgiving was a slasher and shouldn’t be looked at much more in depth. With A-grade effects and kills, it brings horror to the holidays for sure. But it’s something I can imaging having on during the dinner and not necessarily something you’d sit down to all watch together — more of like a Macy’s Parade moment rather than a Halloween night moment. That said, if you’re looking for something other than your eighth watch of ThanksKilling, this is it!
What did you think of Thanksgiving, and what is your favorite Thanksgiving food? Let us know in the comments!
