Thanksgiving
In 2007, Eli Roth promised viewers that the film played during “Grindhouse” would feature all kind of meat. He has finally fulfilled that promise ten years later in “Thanksgiving.” And it was worth the wait. More than anything else I watched this year, “Thanksgiving” felt like a movie that could have been made between Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s two features It wasn’t as far-gone into jump scare territory as a Blumhouse title or as lost to A24-style elevated horror mummery. It is thrillingly pure in its nastiness and proudly so ‘80s movies like “Mother’s Day,” “Graduation Day,” and “New Year’s Evil” are better reference points for it than any mainstream horror release of the past few years (except maybe the recent indie blood bath slasher revival led by the “Terrifier” verse). But while his head-chopping whodunit doesn’t use them, there is something classic about this being a straight up murder mystery.
Just before Thanksgiving dinner, Roth and co writer Jeff Rendell give us one of their most entertaining horror comedy setups to date with a Black Friday sale gone horribly wrong at Right Mart (on Thursday night, naturally). For maximum shock to laugh out loud awe effect, Roth stages this first sequence with perfect timing: The store opens; people rush in like they’re starving for rations in an apocalypse, blood gets spilled over waffle irons, etc. A general lesson of equal opportunity savagery among customers and employees ensues.
A year after this massacre, someone wearing the mask of first Plymouth Rock governor John Carver starts killing townspeople who were involved with the survival movie as shopping spree tragedy high schoolers Jessica (Nell Verlaque), Gabby (Addison Rae), Yulia (Jenna Warren), and Scuba (Gabriel Davenport), who snuck in through the employee entrance, store owner (Rick Hoffman) and wife Kathleen (Karen Cliche), customers whose heinous acts were caught on security camera footage that was suddenly deleted. The killer is investigated by the local sheriff (Patrick Dempsey), but it’s Jessica and her friends who receive cryptic Instagram notifications from the killer, images of a table that has been set and start piecing together what’s been happening. Some suspects include her boyfriend Bobby (Jalen Thomas Brooks), who vanished after his baseball dreams were ruined by a gnarly injury during that fateful Black Friday sale, and Ryan (Milo Manheim), who swooped in on Jessica after Bobby left.
“Thanksgiving” does a very effective job at establishing its wide cast of characters as potential future victims without losing sight of its opening sequence’s potent relatability you get enough to care about them. Rendell’s script for “Thanksgiving” (“2023 reboot” is what he called it to Collider) includes some great jokes about high schoolers being dopey social media users or stubborn children, sometimes just to throw off any would-be sleuths. But it doesn’t do so at the expense of making them feel like anything less than real people, which makes the terror wrought upon them more intimate. Like with Wes Craven’s “Scream,” there’s some lightness to people like Jessica and her friends, goofy as they can be, and that makes this movie’s Ghostface all the more charismatic. The John Carver killer serves up cold-blooded giddy violence with cleverness in spades; there’s something freaky about having colonialism personified as an actual character in your slasher movie tradition face-off
The reason why this horror movie works so well is because there’s only one genuine jump scare in “Thanksgiving,” if you will, but Roth’s film is much more about timing that out in the open; it has a bunch of crazy kills which can give you the best kind of whiplash thanks to a steady ebb and flow of horror and comedy. This foul blast does too much sadistic palate testing with your popcorn towards the end, and pacing be damned. But how fun can a slasher survival game be when it feels like the director is rooting for the killer? You’ll get your answer in “Thanksgiving,” which is at its messiest when trying to pull itself together and delivers its juicy reveal in an uncharacteristically clunky way.
It’s been 16 years nearly all studio horror needs something beyond supernatural (and super serious) to remain profitable so “Thanksgiving” could bring back the slasher flick just as we’re due for another round. “Thanksgiving” is built for hooting and hollering, particularly if you’re a Massachusetts theatergoer who’ll have your mind blown by deep cut name drops to Methuen and Papa Gino’s. It moves with constant momentum and specificity of a passion project, and while saying it’s Roth’s best film might not carry much weight, “Thanksgiving” certainly proves that he can be one helluva entertainer when his script isn’t just a pile o’ guts.
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