RECENT WATCHES: Thanksgiving (2023)

In hindsight, an extended homage to the exploitation films of the seventies and eighties was never going to appeal to a wide audience. Even with popular directors like Tarantino and Rodriguez behind it, “Grindhouse” was destined to become a cult classic, not a mainstream success. A fan favorite is exactly what it became, with people demanding full length expansions of the fake trailers presented in the double feature. After Rodriguez turned “Machete” into a real movie, horror fanatics immediately started hoping Eli Roth would turn his outrageous “Thanksgiving” trailer into a full film. And Roth seemed eager to do that. We know this because, every few years, Eli would talk about how he was just about ready to start production on “Thanksgiving.” This was the state of affairs for sixteen years, most people giving up hope that the movie would actually ever arrive. Providing further evidence that we are in the end times, “Thanksgiving” would finally go before cameras last year. Now, chopping into theaters in the days leading up to Turkey Day, slasher fans can finally see if Roth could make a movie that lived up to that fantastically trashy trailer.

In the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Thanksgiving is a community-wide event. Teenager Jessica Wright and her friends – including baseball star boyfriend George – head to her father's department store for the Black Friday sale. That's when a huge riot breaks out, resulting in several deaths and numerous injuries, including George's arm being broken. A year later, the town is still recovering, many criticizing the Wright family holding another sale. That's when someone in a John Carver mask and a pilgrim hat begins to brutally murder those who were at the riot. As Thanksgiving approaches, Jessica and her friends start to receive threatening Instagram messages. It becomes evident that “John Carver” plans to invite them all to a Thanksgiving feast where the main course is terror. 

It's been over two and a half decades since Roth made his original “Thanksgiving” preview and five years since he last put out a movie. I guess that was enough time for me to forget what kind of stuff Roth makes. During its opening Black Friday mayhem, “Thanksgiving” features folks screaming profanity at each other in a rowdy and wild crowd. Awful people act in exaggerated manners, before dying in ways that are equal parts brutal and comically unlikely. Oh yeah, now I remember why Eli Roth's movies are so divisive. The transition from this grating opening sequence to the traditional slow first act of the slasher movie – dedicated to introducing our teen heroes and their dynamics – threw me for a bit of a loop. That gear shift takes some getting used to.

Another reason why it took me a while to find my groove with “Thanksgiving" is how different it is from the fake trailer that inspired it. The “Thanksgiving” from “Grindhouse” is beholden to the past, an over-the-top parody of the tropes and visual motifs of the eighties slasher flick. 2023's “Thanksgiving,” meanwhile, attempts to move these same tropes thoroughly into the modern age. The protagonists here carry their cell phones with them everywhere, much the way modern teens actually do. They whip them out to record events happening around them, footage within the footage that Roth revisits repeatedly. “Thanksgiving” announces its modernity early on, by goofing on the obnoxious trademarks of the shallowest, most sensationalist Youtube videos. Instagram and live-streaming are plot points in “Thanksgiving,” which the killer uses to taunt his victims and the authorities. While a number of films have attempted to update the formulas of eighties slasher films for zoomers, “Thanksgiving” actually succeeds by keeping the story structure essentially the same but pairing them with modern technology. 

Oddly enough, Roth is not paying homage to the golden age of slashers here. Perhaps because so many throwback films inspired by eighties exploitation followed in the wake of “Grindhouse” –  or simply because enough time has passed that the definition of what is retro has changed – “Thanksgiving” is clearly more indebted to the post-”Scream” wave of body count flicks from the late nineties and early 2000s. A stalking scene through an eerily empty school recalls Wes Craven's classic, as does the whodunit structure and the killer giving a big speech after being revealed. In some ways, the script plays things fairly straight. Many of the supporting characters are ridiculous, such as the gun-totting drug dealer or Jessica's cartoonish dad, and quite a few exaggerated Masshole accents are heard. Yet the primary heroes, and the scenarios they face, are treated seriously. Roth even attempts to generate some actual suspense, such as several sequences where the heroines are hiding from the lurking killer. 

“Thanksgiving's” attempts to function as something like a serious horror movie, in-between outrageous moments of gore, is probably why the movie didn't work for me as well as I'd hope. There's nothing especially unlikable about the young heroes. Nell Verlaque is serviceable as Jessica. I even liked her chemistry with Gabriel Davenport, as resident black guy Scuba, and Jalen Thomas Brooks, as Bobby. The much publicized casting of TikTok celeb Addison Rae isn't as distracting as you might fear, Rae not embarrassing herself playing a largely indistinct character. Yet I'm not sure I exactly cared about any of the heroes either. “Thanksgiving” seems a little too eager to copy films like “I Know What You Did Last Summer” or “Urban Legend,” in that the young cast is ultimately more boring than endearing. 

Roth is clearly still aware why fans of the “Thanksgiving” trailer are here. Gory murder scenes that messily subvert holiday traditions were promised. The film does deliver, with a bloody literalization of “50% off,” several spurting decapitations, a fatal meat tenderizing, and a human taking the place of a turkey inside a large oven. As satisfyingly gruesome as “Thanksgiving's” mayhem is, it can't help but fall short of Roth's original vision. Whenever the feature directly homages the original “Grindhosue” experience, the results are disappointing. As nasty as “Thanksgiving” gets, it's simply not mean enough. Several odious characters are left alive at the end and you can feel Roth easing off the throttle whenever the movie seems primed to go into full-blown mayhem. There's an unsteady push-and-pull here between an attempt to craft an outrageous experience for life-long gore hounds, the underpinnings of black comedy, and something more palatable to mainstream tastes anticipating a “normal” horror movie.

The result is a film that peaks early and never lives up to its full potential. The Thanksgiving dinner to die for is easily the highlight of the film, the fun factor quickly draining away during the exposition-heavy last act. Then again, I always hate the last act of the “Scream” movies too. “Thanksgiving” is certainly a lot of fun at times. When rolling along through a decently assembled mystery, with some solid gore gags and competently orchestrated suspense, I was compelled. It's ultimately still one of Roth's best features. And I'm not surprised that fans, who have been waiting for a proper Thanksgiving slasher their entire lives, have embraced it. Maybe it was impossible for any feature film to live up to that perfectly gross fake-trailer. I'll continue to fantasize about that “Thanksgiving” while begrudgingly accepting this as  a fairly solid adaptation. [7/10]