Happy Thanksgiving, United Statesian readers. The holiday that no-one else really understands finally has a movie of its very own, after years of slashers themed after Christmas (Silent Night, Bloody Night, 1972; Black Christmas, 1974; Silent Night, Deadly Night, 1984), Halloween (Halloween, 1978), Friday the 13th (Friday the 13th, 1980), New Year’s Eve (Terror Train, 1980; New Year’s Evil, 1980), Mother’s Day (Mother’s Day, 1980), Father’s Day (Father’s Day, 2011), Valentine’s Day (My Bloody Valentine, 1981), April Fools (April Fool’s Day, 1986), Mardi Gras (Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh, 1995), the Day of the Dead (Candyman 3: Day of the Dead, 1999), Independence Day (Uncle Sam, 1996), Memorial Day (Memorial Day, 1999) and so many others. Indeed, Thanksgiving‘s genesis was creator Eli Roth’s observation, as a slasher-addled teen, that a Thanksgiving slasher was crying out to be made (technically, there actually were a couple, but certainly in terms of marketing here was an obvious and untapped idea). The current film has its genesis in a fake trailer created by Roth for 2007’s Grindhouse, which has most of its key moments recreated here, 16 years later.
But, of course, a two-minute trailer never intended to advertise an actual film requires embellishment in becoming feature-length, and so, in the film’s best sequence, we open with a flashback to one year before the events of the film proper, a catastrophic Black Friday sale in Plymouth, Massachusetts, shoppers and staff brutalised, trampled, beaten in the name of discount goods and promotional-offer waffle irons. It’s an obscenely American tragedy that a holiday of humility and gratitude should nowadays be primarily associated with consumerism of the “fuck you, got mine” variety. There’s really no other way to describe it. The wholesale mayhem of these early scenes plays out with all the brutality and blunt-force subtlety of Dawn of the Dead; as a character later remarks, “No-one appreciates subtlety any more […] you have to hit them over the head”, surely the mantra of Roth’s whole career.
In any case, a year has passed, and after we spend some time getting to properly know our main characters, a fairly unlikeable bunch of modern teens who each bear some degree of guilt for the tragedy, the killings begin. The killer’s uniform consists of a long, black cloak, one of those tall, buckled hats, and a mask of town founder John Carver; as an ensemble, it really resembles V of V for Vendetta fame (Guy Fawkes Night, now there’s a slasher waiting to be made!), but this killer’s weapons of choice tend to be electric knives, corn-on-the-cob forks, and other vaguely Thanksgiving-related utensils. Actress and Eliza Dushku lookalike Nell Verlaque does a nice job with the typically thin characterisation she gets, but the real draw is, of course, far-fetched and thematically appropriate kills.
These are duly delivered, and the whole thing basically delivers on all that is promised, either by the 2007 fake trailer, or the far less interesting actual trailer from this year. If there is a quibble, it’s a minor one, which is that, whereas Machete and Hobo with a Shotgun, both remade as features from Grindhouse fake trailers, came out in fairly short order and basically built themselves around their respective trailers, with so long having passed, Thanksgiving is no longer the film that was advertised. You might say it was falsely advertised; while the original fake trailer faithfully recreated the gritty cheapness that made Friday the 13th, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Town that Dreaded Sundown feel so queasy and nasty, this Thanksgiving is a slick and modern horror-comedy that sits comfortably alongside any of the recent Scream, Halloween or Candyman sequels. As such, it’s likely to play well with audiences of about the same age as Grindhouse itself. The plot centres around livestreaming, and the denim-wearing, Black Sabbath-loving character of McCarty is surely meant to invite comparisons to Stranger Things‘ Eddie Munson, as he shreds on his Gibson Flying V.
All of this is more-or-less to be expected and, while I might quibble that my favourite line from the original trailer didn’t make it in, or that a memorably nasty moment involving a trampoline has been toned down severely, the truth is that I was solidly entertained for 100 minutes on a holiday I don’t even observe, and that’s surely worth being thankful for.