Review: ‘Thanksgiving Will Not Leave You Hungry For More
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/Our-Favorite-Wines-to-Pour-for-Thanksgiving-FT-MAG1123-f5784459139d4dfd87e9b6c3b32e8d2d.jpg "Opinion: \"Thanksgiving will never leave you hungry again.\"")
Review: ★★★★
Eli Roth's new holiday strip, Thank You, boasts a fitting title. "There will be no leftovers this year." If so, you probably won't feel hungry after watching the movie.
The film was born out of the Grindhouse parody horror trailer, a 2007 homage to Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's exploitation film . The 2023 feature-length version pays homage to the same cheerful aesthetic over the decades, repeating truly disturbing scenes of trampolines, butchered turkeys, and shoes covered in cranberry sauce. Yeah, it gets weird.
"Thanksgiving" tells the story of a serial killer who seeks revenge in Plymouth, Massachusetts, as the holiday season approaches. The killer dresses up as John Carver, a Mayflower Pilgrim and the first governor of Plymouth County, and manages to slaughter people.
First, let's talk about the fear factor. He just swallowed. The film opens with a riot at a grocery store on Black Friday, in which several mobsters are brutally murdered as they fight over a limited supply of discounted waffle irons. As for the blood, it gets worse from there. The exceptional work of Oscar-winning makeup artist Adrien Morot is obvious. Raya's hands were pressed to her face without panic. Hamza, the milder of the two, preferred to hide behind his notebook (to take notes, of course).
"You think he's dead?" At the scene, Rhea asked if the victim's waist was cut in two.
Hamza answered. "The medicine inside me means yes."
Roth made a number of questionable creative decisions when adapting the fake trailer intro into a feature film. In a recent interview , Roth told the New York Times that the best part of directing a fake trailer "is that you get the best parts of the movie without making any sense." Although Roth tried to weave a few logical plot threads into the edited version, the sentiment rings true; it's a bit flawed.
The good news is that no one watches horror movies for the plot, or at least we hope they don't, because there isn't much here. The killer's motivations are laughable (though kudos to Raya for getting it right in the first few minutes of the film), and seemingly important characters are neglected. At one point, we assumed that Thanksgiving was the perfect social commentary on mass consumerism and moral consumption in the age of capitalism. We quickly realized that maybe he was overestimating the film.
However, the beauty of this type of film is that it doesn't require a large cast or complex plot development. It takes some good blood and good old-fashioned courage, and Roth won't let you down.
Of course, the actor probably won't be nominated for an Oscar anytime soon. Sheriff Newton, played by Sexiest Man Alive Patrick "McDreamy" Dempsey, gives us the role of McSteamy, but the teenage cast, including TikTok star Addison Rae, gives a super-parody performance. As gross as it sounds, their character would fit perfectly with the Scooby-Doo movie, dialogue, voice, and everything.
Originally from Newton, Massachusetts, Roth writes a true love letter to the Machuls. stone-faced teenagers, bad Boston accents, city names like Methuen, cold, muted grays, and a truly disturbing obsession with the Pilgrims. Honestly, if anyone is going to die from a waffle iron during a Black Friday sale, it's probably going to happen in Massachusetts.
The insanity of this movie cannot be understated. At one point we were hoping the serial killer was an actual turkey out to get revenge on his brothers. Overall, this movie brought happiness to our vacation.
