Eli Roth’s ‘Thanksgiving’ Is a Solid Slasher That Could Stand To Be Sillier

It’s been 16 years since the release of Grindhouse, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s highly stylized throwback to ‘60s and ‘70s exploitation sleaze. Sandwiched between Planet Terror and Death Proof was a curated selection of trailers for fake grindhouse-style flicks: Edgar Wright’s Don’t, an ode to retro haunted house flicks; Rodriguez’s Machete, featuring Danny Trejo as an outlaw anti-hero; and Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving, a slasher homage that is now a full-length feature.

Unlike its fake-trailer predecessor, 2023’s Thanksgiving is curiously set in the present, specifically in the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. Roth’s film—his first feature since 2018’s Death Wish and Knock Knock, both remakes—opens with an instantly recognizable piece of American horror: Black Friday. A crowd of locals, populated by New England stereotypes (it takes all of a minute for someone to quote Good Will Hunting), ascend on the local Right Mart mega-store, becoming increasingly agitated as they wait for the doors to open. Riled up by the promise of a free waffle iron, the crowd becomes a mob when the owner’s daughter and her friends sneak in early. A riot ensues, Gina Gershon gets brained by a shopping cart, and various shoppers and workers meet gruesome trample-related fates accentuated by (practical) viscera.

Cut to a year later: Using the social media handle “John Carver” (the state’s first governor, a real colonizer-in-chief) and wearing a cheapy plastic pilgrim mask, a psychopath begins targeting everyone involved with the Black Friday riot—the owner of Right Mart (Rick Hoffman), his wife Kathleen (Karen Cliche), their daughter Jessica (Nell Verlaque), and her friends Scuba (Gabriel Davenport), Yulia (Jenna Warren), Ryan (Milo Manheim), Bobby (Jalen Thomas Brooks), and Gabby (TikTok personality Addison Rae). On the case is Sheriff Newlon, played by an exceedingly game Patrick Dempsey, whose New England accent is increasingly exaggerated—and more enjoyable—with each scene.

Roth wisely avoids attempting to reinvent the slasher with meta references and subversions, instead heightening familiar tropes with humor and moments of excessive, mostly practical gore. In this way, Thanksgiving most closely resembles Roth’s debut film, Cabin Fever, and at times feels like a throwback to early and mid-‘00s slashers. Unfortunately, it’s hindered by the same self-seriousness that only becomes entertaining in retrospect. Thanksgiving works best when Roth takes a satirical approach to the material: A man cradles his disemboweled girlfriend and, confronted by the sight of her splayed innards, cries to his friend, “What do I do?!” (a reasonable question); after he guts a Right Mart security guard with an electric meat carver, the killer stops to feed the man’s cat and give him a nice head pat—a welcome change in a genre fond of murdering pets. In another scene, a bereft teen boy recites his essay homework in front of the class, lifting his shirt to wipe away tears, revealing impossibly chiseled abs for a 16-year-old. These, as well as the killer’s villain monologue during the centerpiece “dinner” scene, are genuinely hilarious moments of horror satire.

It’s unsurprising from Roth, a filmmaker famous for his genre expertise (he appeared in Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments and later produced and hosted Eli Roth’s History of Horror for AMC) and who wears his influences proudly. This is the guy who gave Italian director Ruggero Deodato a cameo as a cannibal in Hostel: Part II, a dog whistle to horror nerds who cut their teeth on gnarly foreign imports and have strong opinions on Cannibal Holocaust vs. Cannibal Ferox. What is surprising is that Roth has become more restrained, and that this actually hinders the experience of watching a movie called Thanksgiving, about a maniac in a pilgrim costume who harbors a murderous grudge against a local capitalist.

Thanksgiving delivers on the kills (save for the occasional cartoonish CGI blood splatter) with plenty of guts and gore, imaginative impalings, dismembered body parts, and torn flesh. The killer may be obvious, but that, too, is fitting for a film fed on classic tropes. At 106 minutes, Thanksgiving is slightly overcooked and would benefit from a trim—Roth spends far too much time on character development in a film that actually suffers from it (with the exception of Yulia’s gruff Russian father, an absolute legend). Still, it’s hard to criticize Roth too harshly for what is ultimately the kind of movie we need more of: perfectly enjoyable, mid-budget horror films with simple hooks and solid splatter.

(featured image: TriStar Pictures)