Title: Thanksgiving
Describe This Movie In One Planes, Trains and Automobiles Quote:
CAR RENTAL AGENT: You’re fucked.
Brief Plot Synopsis: It ain’t cool being no jive turkey so close to Thanksgiving.
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 3 Turbo-Men (Turbo-Mans?) out of 5
Tagline: “There will be no leftovers.”
Better Tagline: “Never thought about using gizzards for *that*.”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: One year after a Black Friday riot that left dozens injured of dead and injured store patrons, the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts is trying to move on with their Thanksgiving traditions. Jessica Wright (Nell Verlaque) is trying to ride out her last year of high school without thinking too much about how the tragedy happened at her dad’s (Rick Hoffman) store. Unfortunately, someone with a penchant for dressing as one of the town fathers seems to have taken the riot personally, and is targeting those involved. Can doughty Sheriff Newlon (Patrick Dempsey) stop the murders?
“Critical” Analysis: Thanksgiving joins Machete and Hobo With a Shotgun in that rarefied-ish company of features spawned from the joke trailers that ran between the 2007 Rodriguez/Tarantino Grindhouse combo of Planet Terror and Death Proof. The movie — like the trailer — is directed by Eli Roth, and mostly lives up to the potential of the trailer. And if it lacks the camp sleaziness of its source material, it tries its best to make up for it with gore.
And it’s not so much a design flaw as an unintended benefit of the character depictions that almost none of them are people you’re going to miss. The exception would be Jessica, our (presumed) Final Girl, who is at least given the skeleton of a backstory (dead mom, gold-digging stepmother) and is the least obnoxious of the teenagers she hangs out with.
But the rest? Lonnie, one of the instigators (who hails from a rival high school), is the type of guy who plays Sammy Hagar to pump his football team up. Jessica’s alpha jock buddy Evan (Tomaso Sanelli) is the one who posts the opening Black Friday rampage to YouTube, in true influencer dipshit style. And the first two kills are 1) one of the riot’s primary instigators, and 2) a cowardly security guard who fled the scene.
Hoffman’s store owner Thomas Wright is also on the short list, and the actor continues to have some of the best Resting Prick Face of all time, but his is also the most fully realized character arc. Dempsey’s Newlon is kind of a goober, but exudes a quiet confidence. That might be bolstered, however, by the comically huge number of cops for a town Plymouth’s size.
Roth and screenwriter Jeff Rendell hit all the original trailer highlights, which were already pretty inspired. I’ll single out the parade scene, because it unspools like the Faber Homecoming from Animal House on PCP. He also includes several … let’s call them “homages” … to other horror classics like The Silence of the Lambs and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
But this may well be Roth’s best horror movie, though it’s mildly disappointing he didn’t stick to the grimy aesthetic of the Grindhouse trailer. The use of this particular holiday as a horror motif is interesting, but without the period aesthetic that made that teaser so successful, it’s just teens getting murdered again. But while it threatens at times to succumb under the weight of Protagonista dumbassedness, Thanksgiving is both nasty and funny enough to earn it a seat at the adults’ table.
Get Asked By A 14-Year Old:
14YO: Just tell me if Addison Rae dies.
RFTED: Which one is she?
14YO: Jessica’s best friend.
RFTED: Oh yeah … oof.
14YO: What?!
RFTED: Huh? Oh, nothing.
Thanksgiving is in theaters today.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
