This Thanksgiving, I’m Thankful for Eli Roth

Horror movies are having a cultural moment right now, and if you’re not in it, you’re going to have nothing to talk to your family about this holiday season. It’s more than just going out to the theater or turning on a streaming platform and seeing a scary movie—it’s a whole experience.

I’m one of the many people who love a good slasher film. We cuddle up to our boo, we get tense, and then we have a giggle. We try to guess who did it, and we yell at the people to not go down that dark hallway or to call for help on the radio. If this is the experience you’re seeking, you will absolutely not be disappointed by Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving, which takes place in modern-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the titular holiday. It has all the good tropes, but it still keeps you guessing. The gore effects are grimy. Even the motive holds water for me. And the holiday aesthetic is camp in all the best ways.

Courtesy of Tristar Pictures

Adding on to your viewing experience, Thanksgiving has a bit of lore behind it. Back in 2007, directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino made two separate films, Terror Planet and Death Proof, and ran them back to back as an homage to old double features of decades gone by in a theatrically released project called Grindhouse. To make the experience complete, they roped in a few of their friends to make fake trailers to run in between them. And, even cooler, they put out a contest for indie filmmakers to submit projects—the winner was shown among the Hollywoodites, giving Grindhouse a more authentic tie-in to the low-budget genre it was emulating.

Among the five fake advertisements was a trailer by director Eli Roth for a film titled Thanksgiving that had all the good hallmarks of a slasher with the tagline “There will be no leftovers.” Despite it being a two-and-a-half-minute parody of John Carpenter’s Halloween overshadowed by cult-favorite-bait films made by two powerhouse directors, fans have been bugging Roth about making the spoof into a full-length feature ever since, and 2023 is finally the year. However, this road has been traveled before: the winning indie project submission, Hobo with a Shotgun, was so well received that a feature was made in 2011 starring Rutger Hauer, and Robert Rodriguez actualized his faux trailer featuring Danny Trejo as the titular character in Machete (2010) and Machete Kills (2013). With Thanksgiving being the third of the five trailers to inspire this reverse filmmaking formula, it raises the question: Could Rob Zombie’s absolutely bonkers sci-fi pitch Werewolf Women of the SS see the light of day too?

Pief Weyman

Thanksgiving, opening on Thanksgiving Day 2022, gives us its backstory by introducing us to two families and how their lives differ. Sheriff Newlon (Patrick Dempsey) arrives with a pie at some friends’ modest home. But as they’re about to sit down to eat, Mitch (Ty Olsson) announces he has to miss dinner to go in to work as the manager of local department store, RightMart, lest he be fired. We flip over to a lavish home, where the patriarch of the Wright family (Rick Hoffman) is bragging about how much they’re probably going to rake in after RightMart’s sale. The family briefly discusses the ethics of having your store open on Thanksgiving, but the have-its brush off the complaints of teenage daughter, Jessica (relative newcomer Nell Verlaque).

Jess and her boyfriend, Bobby (Jalen Thomas Brooks), soon head out to go to the movies with their jock friends, making a pit stop at her father’s store to pick up some things. There’s a mob forming out front, pushing the gate and cussing out security in thick Bostonian accents, but our crew gleefully let themselves in through the employee entrance. The teens then jeer at the mob through the glass doors, and tensions rise until a deadly stampede breaks out. Three people are dead, one injured (all for some waffle irons, not some 2022 equivalent of Tickle Me Elmo, but Roth isn’t not making a documentary here). One year later, our crew who were present at the time of the riot find themselves targeted in cryptic social media posts—and then they start disappearing.

Part of our main crew, realizing the fun & games of shopping are over. Courtesy of Tristar Pictures

Fans of the 2007 trailer will notice callbacks and Easter eggs, but the overall look of the film is modern and clean. Gone is that grungy, grainy look, as is the distorted narration of the trailer. Some purists might object to discarding these homages to the ’70s grindhouse style, but it’s a solid choice that brings a new classic slasher to 2023 and helps the film stand firmly on its own without the expectations of being a faithful adaptation holding it down. And it’s not all sleek and modern: the kills, while creative and definitely gory, possess a rubbery quality to them that toes (and sometimes crosses) the line between gore and comedy.

Note: There are some very minor spoilers about characterization and one kill setup in the next paragraph. If you want to go in as fresh as possible, you can skip ahead.

One thing Thanksgiving noticeably lacks that both the Grindhouse trailer and many other slasher films have in spades is horny teenagers. While at first our main crew seems to consist of your typical paired-off heterosexual couples, and all of them are jocks except one token smart girl, these kids grew on me as endearing, albeit flawed, people. The relationships they have are respectful and trusting of one another, even down to the Grade A asshole quarterback archetype, and I almost found myself wanting the film to turn into a vigilante hero team-up movie. Another trope broken for the better: when your hot blonde cheerleader is being set up for attack from the killer, instead of her being changing clothes or taking a shower—a staple in final-girl horror classics—homegirl is fully clothed, just trying to pop in her contact lenses. Which, if you wear contact lenses, you’ll know is just as vulnerable, if not more so, than being wrapped in a towel when a killer is chasing you.

Courtesy of Tristar Pictures

There are a couple of small final twists. While some of them can be spotted in advance, the balance of the characters you’ve come to know against the delightfully Pilgrim-y backdrop of Plymouth makes this wild ride come full circle, and any letdown of predictability will probably pass you right by.

So if you’re looking for an experience that’s gory, fun, and laced with a tiny middle finger to capitalism that you can nerd out about to other theatergoers, definitely make Thanksgiving part of your holiday.