Summary
Eli Roth is back on the scene after five years away, with his new slasher movie,Thanksgiving. Based on the fake trailer he made for Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’sGrindhousedouble bill way back in 2007, the movie is the newest entry in a long line of slasher movies that have contributed to the resurgence of the horror sub-genre in recent years. Roth is no stranger to the popular sub-genre afterHostelandHostel Part 2became huge successes in 2005 and 2007 respectively.
Ever sinceHalloween 2018brought slasher icon, Michael Myers back to the big screen, Hollywood has been eager to delve back into the world of slasher movies, withScream 2022andScream 6also making big money at the box office. Eli Roth is a master of the horror genre, so it’s a delight to see him return with a full-length version of his fake Grindhouse trailer. It’s not the first time one of these trailers has been made into a full-length movie, asThanksgivingfollows the success ofMacheteandHobo with a Shotgun. IfThanksgivingdoes as well as expected at the box office, it might not be the last fakeGrindhousetrailer to make its way onto the big screen. It might also pave the way forThanksgivingto become the nextbig influential horror franchise.
Jeff Rendell and Eli Roth
Cast
Nell Verlaque, Patrick Dempsey, Rick Hoffman, Addison Rae, Gina Gershon, Milo Manheim, Jalen Thomas Brooks
1 hour 47 minutes
Rotten Tomatoes score
83%
It’s Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and everyone in the town is buzzing about the Black Friday sales, until things get majorly out of hand at a massive store owned by rich businessman, Thomas Wright. Four people are killed as eager shoppers barge into the store, leaving the town in utter shock.
One year later, the town is still reeling from the events, when a masked killer goes on the rampage, seemingly targeting people who were responsible for the carnage the previous year, leaving the police led by Sheriff Eric Newlon (Patrick Dempsey) to figure out what’s going on, and stop the killer in his tracks.
What did critics say about Thanksgiving?
Critics have generally been positive aboutEli Roth’s new slasher film,Thanksgiving, with it being his best reviewed film of his career so far.Variety were positive about the new movieand likened it to the Scream franchise.
Thanksgiving has the fast-break patter of the “Scream” films — not the we’re-fighting-off-a-slasher-as-if-we-were-in-a-slasher-movie meta quality (which has gotten old anyway), but the precociousness that drives it.
Similarly,the Roger Ebert movie review sitealso gave it the thumbs up, with Nick Allen saying the following about the slasher fest:
Thanksgiving is wonderfully efficient with establishing its potential future victims, giving you just enough to care about them, and not losing the potent relatability of its opening sequence.
How does Thanksgiving end?
TheThanksgivingending sees Jessica come up with a plan to draw the killer out by using herself and her family as bait during Pymouth’s annualThanksgiving parade. Unfortunately, Carver dons a clown costume instead of his normal mask and kidnaps her along with her father and Jessica’s friend Scuba. The killer takes them to his hideout, where he already has Gabby and Evan held captive, and the John Carver-inspired masked killer assembles all the survivors around a dinner table. He has also brought the corpses of his previous victims to sit alongside them, with Kathleen’s cooked dead body in the middle of the table. He goes around the table asking each of them what they are thankful for, and proceeds to kill each one as he makes his way around the table.
Jessica manages to escape the horrifying dinner party massacre and makes her way to a nearby warehouse. She discovers Sheriff Eric Newlon unconscious on the floor near his patrol car. She watches through one of the nearby warehouse’s windows and sees her ex-boyfriend, Bobby taking off the John Carver mask and assumes he is the killer.
Jessica and Sheriff Newlon who has now regained consciousness, try to take Bobby down, but he escapes. Newlon calls for backup to arrive, but Jessica notices some of the same burrs stuck to Newlon’s boots that got stuck to her own legs. Newlon notices them as well and figures Jessica knows he is actually the real killer.
Newlon outs himself as the killer and reveals his motive. He was having an affair with Amanda Collins, who died in the Black Friday massacre one year earlier, and he sought revenge on the people responsible for her death. Newlon also reveals that Amanda was pregnant with their baby when she died. Newlon had planned on framing Bobby as the murderer after previously kidnapping and drugging him.
Newlon is about to kill Jessica when she reveals she’s been secretly live-streaming his confession, which enrages him. He charges at Jessica but is stopped in his tracks by a hammer which is thrown through the window by Bobby, who then climbs into the room to rescue Jessica.
Jessica and Bobby attempt to escape from the warehouse, and are followed by Newlon, who is wielding an ax. Jessica uses the flammable gas in a nearby inflatable turkey along with the gunpowder of an antique musket and appears to blow Newlon up in a huge explosion.
A few hours later, the police and firefighters are on the scene at the warehouse. Jessica is reunited with her surviving friends, and it’s revealed that her father, Thomas, has survived and is recuperating in hospital. Jessica and Bobby sit in an ambulance outside the warehouse when she overhears two firefighters saying they didn’t find a single body in the charred remains of the warehouse. At that point, a masked firefighter walks away from the wreckage, implying that it might be Newlon, who has somehow survived the explosion.
Later that night, Jessica has a nightmare which sees her attacked by a badly burnt Newlon. She wakes up in disbelief and panic as theThanksgivingending arrives.
MORE:Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey Isn’t The Only Horror Movie Based On A Children’s Story
