Eli Roth sports a varied filmography with a few endlessly compelling entries. Despite directing action blockbusters, thrillers, documentaries, and more, he's still seen as a splatter film icon. Thanksgiving sees him return to his roots by finally fleshing out his 2007 Grindhouse trailer into a feature. The film's marketing hides nothing, including spoiling a few of its best kills. This is precisely the darkly hilarious gorefest fans have come to expect.
Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse featured fictitious trailers between its segments. Robert Rodriguez created Machete for the task, adapting a script he'd written a decade earlier. After pitching the idea, filmmakers like Edgar Wright, Rob Zombie, and Eli Roth created new submissions. Roth's Thanksgiving is the third fake ad to become real. Machete and Machete Kills explored the Mexploitation concept Rodriguez imagined flawlessly. Jason Eisner's Hobo with a Shotgun is a bombastic vigilante action blockbuster with shockingly gripping dialogue. Roth's offering had less impressive goals but achieved them with aplomb.
Thanksgiving: What is Eli Roth’s Holiday-Horror About?
After Black Christmas, Krampus, and Violent Night, holiday horror takes a stab at a new festivity with Eli Roth's Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is a parody and example of the holiday-focused slasher films that became common in the 70s and 80s. John Carpenter's Halloween seems like the ur-example, but its quality makes it an outlier. Black Christmas, Silent Night, Deadly Night, and April Fool's Day are better examples. They take the trappings of a famous occasion and wrap them around a masked killer. Roth played up the concept's absurdity by tying it to a holiday most remember for overeating and watching football. The feature introduces a plot, but the main draw is the same. This is a slasher film in which the antagonist dresses like a pilgrim and uses dinner equipment to kill his screeching prey. The feature-length upgrade adds a compelling backstory and a fun whodunnit element to the holiday.
Thanksgiving takes place in Plymouth, Massachusetts, a town around 50 miles away from where Roth and screenwriter Jeff Rendell grew up. One fateful holiday evening, a greedy store owner and his snooty wife decide to leave their Walmart-adjacent business open to draw in customers. The Black Friday rush begins hours early, packing countless angry shoppers behind barricades while they demand discounted goods. The owner's daughter, Jessica, sneaks a few friends into the store through a hidden entrance. The furious consumers see a few teenagers inside and attack, causing a stampede that kills dozens of people. Jessica's dad refuses to close down for the following Thanksgiving, garnering public outrage. Suddenly, someone dressed as a pilgrim hunts and kills Plymouth citizens seen at the Black Friday disaster. The cops struggle to find a lead, leaving Jessica and her friends to stop the so-called John Carver before they wind up guests at his table.
This type of slasher film makes no distinctions between its comedy and its horror. The killer is intimidating but still imperfect. He's not Freddy Krueger, despite his efforts to appear so. He displays superhuman strength, speed, and planning skills. His gruesome violence will extract shocked groans from the audience. Everything unbelievable about the character comes straight from the compendium of slasher tropes. The heroes take plenty of time to sit down and discuss John Carver's identity under his plastic mask. Roth and Rendell introduce a small army of locals with potential motives, but suspicions linger on Jessica's two potential romantic interests and the store's bereaved ex-manager. As a mystery, Thanksgiving's big twists are decent but not excellent. The reveal is shocking enough. Conventional tips and tricks won't immediately yield a definite answer. Thanksgiving manages its characters well enough to keep anyone from feeling superfluous. Catching the killer is far less important to Roth than watching him work.
Roth finds several compelling Thanksgiving-themed gimmicks for John Carver's kills. He and Rendell did most of the work 16 years ago, but they have some new ideas. Anyone who has managed to avoid the modern trailers so far would be advised to keep doing so, as they spoil a couple of the most viscerally unpleasant moments. The full-length feature does invent a few new jaw-dropping moments that will shock any audience. Fans of the Grindhouse trailer have the unique experience of knowing some upcoming kills without knowing who will suffer that fate. They'll find some memorable moments made less explicit while others are realized with a modern budget. It conveys a strange feeling of prescience that is frequently used against the viewer. Newcomers and longtime Roth devotees will find a lot to love in Thanksgiving.
Everyone knows whether they want to see Thanksgiving. These films used to be a dime a dozen, but it's been years since a thrilling 80s-style slasher hit the big screen. Eli Roth delivers an excellent version of the idea he sold to Tarantino and Rodriguez 16 years ago. Thanksgiving is everything it promises to be and more. It's darkly hilarious, soaked in blood, and packed with charmingly on-the-nose creative choices. Roth has been developing a Borderlands movie for years, but this is his modern revival. Gather some loved ones and sit down for Thanksgiving. It could be a yearly tradition.
Thanksgiving
A year after a Black Friday disaster kills several, a masked murderer exacts revenge on everyone involved. It's up to a group of teenagers to uncover the killer before they end up on his dinner table.