Thanksgiving

It took Eli Roth the better part of 16 years… but the horror maverick finally managed to make good on his longstanding pledge to turn the fake trailer for his twisted turkey day slasher (originally featured in 2007’s Grindhouse) into a full-length feature. The first thing you’ll probably notice is that Roth elected to scrap any pretense of a cheap, grainy, scratched-to-hell 70s exploitation aesthetic in favor of a sleek modern sheen… a decision which might initially seem like a betrayal, but in truth should actually be commended. It is, after all, extremely difficult - if not borderline impossible - to make modern grindhouse films that don’t slip easily, almost imperceptibly into spoof; looking back on the Grindhouse experiment (and its subsequent imitators), Tarantino proved the only filmmaker capable of truly threading the tonal needle. The genre grants giddy license to unshackled creativity, an invitation to wallow freely in the amoral narrative muck… and yet, it’s precisely that lack of inhibition, that craving to electroshock the audience with volts of outrageous audacity that inevitably leads to an excess of self-conscious rib-prodding. It’s an almost co-dependent form of filmmaking - the director needs constant affirmation in order to function. 

Thanksgiving is set in Plymouth, Massachusetts in present day… though its overall vibe feels most reminiscent of the post-modern slasher era of Scream that spawned films such as Urban Legend and Cherry Falls. A Black Friday sale at the local RightMart soon turns ugly (Roth maximizing every drop of warped capitalist satire from the sight of blood literally being spilt over free waffle irons)… and one year later, a killer in a pilgrim’s hat and a John Carver mask is targeting those who were at the heart of the fray. That’s bad news for Jessica (Nell Verlaque) and her friends - popular jocks Evan and Scuba (Tomaso Sanelli and Gabriel Davenport) and their girlfriends Gabby and Yulia (Addison Rae and Jenna Warren) - who slipped into the store early (Jessica’s father - played by Royal Match spokesman Rick Hoffman - is the owner) and enflamed the already volatile crowd into storming the entrance. Who might our masked slasher be? Could it be ex-floor manager Mitch, who’s harbored a much-publicized vendetta against RightMart ever since his wife was tragically killed that fateful night? Could it be Jessica’s ex-boyfriend Bobby, a baseball phenom whose pitching arm was maimed during the ensuing fracas, causing him to ghost his friends and drop off the grid? Or could it be Jessica’s new squeeze Ryan, exactly the sort of clean-cut “nice guy” whose vanilla facade masks a more sinister agenda?   

Roth has had a somewhat vexing career. Cabin Fever and the Hostel franchise positioned him as the next big thing in horror, yet it often feels like he never quite burst from the starting blocks. There have been highlights, of course - the family-friendly John Bellairs adaptation The House with a Clock in its Walls, most notably (not to mention his memorable turn as the Bear Jew in Inglourious Basterds) - but Thanksgiving feels like precisely the sort of movie he should have been prioritizing all along. His grasp of the material has a comfortable, intuitive ease… he understands when to use the throttle and when to use the brake (the most (in)famous moment of the trailer was when a cheerleader does the splits in midair, only to land crotch-first on a knife blade jutting through the trampoline… a scene which Roth recreates, yet subverts - once again showing a desire to evolve beyond the strained gimmickry of the project’s grindhouse origins). As is often the case with the better slashers, the death sequences have a fiendish sense of showmanship; a graphic flair that never quite drifts into nihilistic cruelty the way the Hostel films did. Roth’s innate love of shock value has been tempered with more refined storytelling instincts. It seems odd to say about a film that features someone literally being crisped alive into a Thanksgiving turkey, but he’s noticeably matured as a director.    ​

If only Roth and his screenwriter/childhood pal Jeff Rendell had managed to cook up a more robust payoff - lumps start to form in the third act’s figurative gravy. Certain characters are awkwardly compromised by their red herring status (I’m looking at you, [redacted]). You can sense the underlying urge to establish John Carver as the next great slasher icon, but it never quite materializes - not in the way it did with, say, M3GAN earlier this year. He’s like a pilgrim Ghostface crossed with “V” from V For Vendetta (minus the charisma), which is a lot less fun than it sounds. The cast is surprisingly bereft of name talent - mostly Patrick Dempsey as the town sheriff and technically Addison Rae (a TikTok superstar, though you wouldn’t necessarily guess that based on her mostly indifferent screen presence here) - but newcomer Nell Verlaque intrigues. She may not be the next Neve Campbell, but physically she almost evokes the young Julia Roberts. Thanksgiving fared well enough at the box office that a sequel has already been commissioned, so Roth will get another opportunity to tweak his approach… not unlike a sweet potato casserole recipe that comes out of the oven adequately tasty yet not quite perfect. In the meantime, you could find a worse pairing for the post-meal pumpkin pie than this festively sanguinary slasher, come next November.