Thanksgiving (2023) – Oh Honey, THANKS-LIVING

Released: 17th November
Seen: 15th November

In 2007, the film Grindhouse got a sadly small release to the world, a release that flopped because people seemed to just hate fun that year. Those who did see this glorious little event were treated to a pair of wonderful throwbacks to the days of the grindhouse cinema which were split up by a set of hilarious fake trailers for movies like Werewolf Women of the SS and Don’t. Some of these fake trailers would end up being turned into feature films, those being Machete and Hobo With A Shotgun but there was one trailer that people have spent the last 15 years begging to be turned into a movie.

That trailer was by Eli Roth for an 80s slasher throwback called Thanksgiving, a playful ribbing of those corny classic horror films that existed mostly because some guy in Canada saw a holiday was coming out and made a cheap horror film around it (No, seriously, that’s how we got so many classic 80s holiday slasher films… thank you Canada). For over a decade and a half, horror fans have been begging for that movie to be made and apparently, Eli Roth finally found the time because Thanksgiving is here and while it might not be the exact film we expected, it’s still a damn good time.

Thanksgiving in the town of Plymouth is a sacred event, there’s a lot of celebrations going on around the town and everyone is ready to enjoy the holiday the right way… by going to RightMart on Thanksgiving in order to get a hold of the early Black Friday sales. One year the sale starts early and a stampede of customers, seemingly egged on by the kids who will end up being the focus of the film, ends up killing several people. A year later, Jessica (Nell Verlaque) and her close circle of friends are still dealing with the aftermath of everything when people around town start turning up dead in various horrifying ways, photos of them being shared online with the main cast tagged. Seems our main cast is invited to the most horrifying Thanksgiving dinner of all time, who is going to be the one to cut the turkey?

Let’s get the elephant out of the room right away, this is not the 80s throwback that you might’ve hoped for. The film is pristine, it’s set in the modern day, people use cell phones and aren’t throwing out dialogue that feels 30 years out of date. It’s not as intense as the trailer that inspired it (That trailer included a trampoline leading to someone being stabbed in the vagina, you aren’t getting that here) and it’s definitely not as intensely cheesy… however, that doesn’t mean this film isn’t good. Indeed, everything about Thanksgiving absolutely works wonderfully, it’s just not the kind of film that you would have expected based on the source material.

The actual film itself is still a loving nod to those cheesy horror films, but more in the vein of Scream where you know all the tropes and Thanksgiving has fun with that knowledge. The cheesy mask that ends up becoming iconic is being given away for free at restaurants, every kill is themed around the titular holiday even when it makes no damn sense and characters just vanish for suspicious periods in order to create red herrings. It’s the kind of stuff that makes these classic slasher movies so endlessly fun in their own unique way. Thanksgiving is also a film that acknowledges that it is 2023, people have cell phones they can use to call for help, you can track things easier, live streaming is a thing and it makes for some fun moments. If this film is going to be set in the modern day, then it’s nice that they didn’t contrive bullshit reasons to avoid that, if anything they use a lot of modern things to make scenes scarier.

There’s an undeniable playfulness that just oozes through Thanksgiving, like the people making the movie know that people have waited a damn long time for this so it’s going to make sure there’s something fun going on at all times. It’s got shocks, gore and cheesy one-liners just oozing out of every pore, not afraid to mess around with tones when it would just be fun to do so. Thanksgiving plays with some of the expectations that the audience has because of the original trailer, twisting some of the most memorable imagery just enough to actually shock you but it’s also not afraid to just admit this whole thing is silly and we should enjoy that. It’s a horror film set on Thanksgiving, of course the killer is going to have victims tied up and ask them what they’re all thankful for because that’s fucking hilarious and the film embraces that.

Sure there are some things about Thanksgiving that don’t work, as mentioned before there are a few characters who just kind of disappear for the third act without any explanation other than “We needed you to think the killer might be someone else before the big reveal” but… I don’t know, kill them? Kill the red herrings? There’s a major plotline involving the husband of one of the first victims and lord help me if I remember what happened to him because he was a non-presence after the dramatic opening. Again, on some level, this does fit with that classic slasher film trope where the semi-big name star would just be gone before the film was wrapped and they had to work around it if they were needed but it also felt weird then and feels weird now. 

It also must be said but there are just too many characters in Thanksgiving who get to live, some are just superfluous extras who are there to maybe create some intrigue and be part of the rogues’ gallery of wacky characters but it makes it hard to keep track of everyone all the time and it feels like a waste to have so many major characters still alive at the end. This is meant to be a slasher movie, a very over-the-top one at that (did I mention the amount of gore this film has? Because damn, it’s bloody) so why not just take off a few more heads while you’re here? It feels like there are scenes missing because so many characters just stop turning up, it’s not too distracting unless you’re a fan of the genre and know that normally this many characters staying alive is an anomaly.

But any problems I have with the film are minimal because Thanksgiving is a fucking blast of a film. It promises a cheesy R-rated slasher built around the holiday of Thanksgiving and god damn does it deliver. It’s big and over the top, full of great gory kills that’s a mix of hilarious and horrifying and it never slows down for a second. Sure it would’ve been nice to get the fucked up grindhouse version that the 2007 trailer suggested (and it would’ve been doable, Terrifier 2 proves that it’s a viable option) but for what we’ve got, it’s something to be thankful for.