{"id":7642,"date":"2024-10-27T22:59:30","date_gmt":"2024-10-28T02:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=7642"},"modified":"2024-10-27T22:59:30","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T02:59:30","slug":"thanksgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/27\/thanksgiving\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanksgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Thanksgiving<\/strong> (2023)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 TriStar\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 107 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody horror violence, pervasive language, some sexual material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Eli Roth\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jeff Rendell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Brandon Roberts\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Milan Chadima\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 17, 2023 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Patrick Dempsey, Nell Verlaque, Addison Rae, Tomaso Sanelli, Gabriel Davenport, Jenna Warren, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Milo Manheim, Karen Clich\u00e9, Rick Hoffman, Gina Gershon, Ty Victor Olsson, Jeff Teravainen, Russell Yuen, Derek McGrath, Tim Dillon, Chris Sandiford, Mike Amonsen, Shailyn Griffin, Amanda Barker, Joe Deflin, Jordan Kyle Poole, James Goldman.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $31.9M (US)\/$46.6M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0I have been salivating for Eli Roth\u2019s Thanksgiving<\/strong> ever since I saw the faux trailer in the Robert Rodriguez-Quentin Tarantino collaboration Grindhouse way back in 2007. I\u2019m glad it finally came to fruition. Even better, it\u2019s every bit as gory and nasty as I could have hoped for if not more. It\u2019s a nifty throwback to the Golden Age of slasher flicks (i.e. the 80s) with a heaping helping of blood, guts and brains. It definitely earns its R rating.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Now let me tell you what it\u2019s NOT. It\u2019s not elevated horror like you\u2019d get from A24. It\u2019s not one of those supernatural deals rife with ineffectual jump-scares and bad CGI (i.e. the Insidious films). And while it\u2019s funny at times, the humor is not of the ironic, self-aware variety. I\u2019d say it\u2019s more satirical with its pointed criticism of toxic consumerism. How else would you describe Black Friday? I don\u2019t know who\u2019s worse, the customers doing battle royale for a smart phone or the store owners who open the doors when people are supposed to be having Thanksgiving dinner with their families? Based on what happens in Thanksgiving<\/strong>, I\u2019d say both.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Like all slashers worth their weight in fake blood, Thanksgiving<\/strong> opens with a tragic event that serves as the catalyst for a revenge-motivated killing spree on the anniversary of said tragedy. In this case, it\u2019s a deadly riot at a Plymouth, MA Right Mart (kind of cross between Wal-Mart and Best Buy) on Thanksgiving night. The owner Thomas Wright (Hoffman, Suits) couldn\u2019t have planned for it worse if he tried. What idiot hires only two security guards, one of whom takes off when the s*** hits the fan, on the biggest shopping night of the year? The crowd waiting outside starts out ugly and only gets worse from there. When all is said and done, people are dead, injured and traumatized. A year later, somebody wants revenge.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The horror centers on a group of high schoolers including Wright\u2019s daughter Jessica (Verlaque, Big Shot) whose star athlete boyfriend (Brooks, Walker) ghosts her after suffering a career-ending injury in the melee. Somebody starts tagging them in cryptic Instagram posts depicting a table set for Thanksgiving dinner. Each setting has a place card with their names on it. People around them start getting killed off in gruesome ways by a psycho dressed as a pilgrim. The murders have the local police, headed by Sheriff Newton (Dempsey, Scream 3), baffled and the entire town on edge. It\u2019s up to Jessica and her friends- bffs Gabby (Rae, He\u2019s All That) and Yulia (Warren, The Young Arsonists) and football players Evan (Sanelli, Detention Adventure) and Scuba (Davenport, Don\u2019t Sell My Baby)- to unmask the killer.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There\u2019s only one thing about Thanksgiving<\/strong> I\u2019m a little disappointed in. It doesn\u2019t use the same aesthetic as the fake trailer. I think it would have been cool if it looked more like a grindhouse movie, but it didn\u2019t make me enjoy it any less. I LOVED IT! While it borrows ideas from 90s horror staples like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, its sensibility is firmly rooted in the 80s with its myriad of holiday-themed horrors like My Bloody Valentine, Graduation Day and New Year\u2019s Evil. We even get a sprinkling of 70s-era horror with an idea right out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Trust me. You\u2019ll know it when you see it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Director Roth doesn\u2019t shy away from showing us the killer\u2019s handiwork either. Thanksgiving<\/strong> is mad bloody! The kill scenes are awesome. The makeup effects are top-notch. Here are a few of the highlights: two decapitations (lots of blood spurt), victim gets cut in half, victim gets head bashed in with hammer, victim gets disemboweled by buzz saw, victim gets impaled through back of head, victim gets stabbed through trampoline and victim gets cooked alive in oven. That\u2019s on top of the carnage in the Black Friday riot. All of it is shown in blood-red detail. For that, I am truly thankful.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What can one say about the acting in a slasher movie like Thanksgiving<\/strong>? It\u2019s pretty much what you\u2019d expect. The girls are hot and can scream loud. The guys are handsome and not too bright. Verlaque does a good job as Jessica, a great final girl and the only character with any apparent brain activity although it still takes her the whole movie to identify the killer. Now I could sit here and tell you I figured it out long before the big reveal, but that wouldn\u2019t be entirely true. Roth, following the slasher playbook to the letter, gives us a long list of possible suspects. He had me guessing for a while and I had somebody in mind, but I was wrong. However, the killer is somebody else that I considered. Whatever, I had a great time playing the \u201cguess the killer\u201d game. That\u2019s my second favorite thing about the slasher genre.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Roth has a pretty good track record as far as horror movies go. His credits include Cabin Fever, Hostel I & II and The Green Inferno. Thanksgiving<\/strong> is most definitely his piece de resistance. Working from a screenplay by Jeff Rendell (they collaborated on the story), he has fashioned a new slasher masterpiece. He has made the definitive Thanksgiving horror movie, the only holiday that didn\u2019t get the slasher treatment in the 80s (well, that and Arbor Day). I plan to watch it every year from now on along with my other annuals- The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Planes, Trains and Automobiles and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Thanks again. Eli. You\u2019re the man!<\/p>\n

TRIVIA NOTE: Thanksgiving<\/strong> comes from TriStar, the same studio that released the controversial Christmas slasher flick Silent Night, Deadly Night in November \u201984. Let\u2019s hope they don\u2019t disown this one too.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanksgiving (2023)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 TriStar\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 107 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody horror violence, pervasive language, some sexual material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Eli Roth\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jeff Rendell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Brandon Roberts\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Milan Chadima\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 17, 2023 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Patrick Dempsey, Nell Verlaque, Addison Rae, Tomaso Sanelli, Gabriel Davenport, Jenna Warren, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Milo Manheim, Karen Clich\u00e9, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7681,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holiday-movies","category-scary-gory-wild-i-love-it"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Thanksgiving-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7642"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7683,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7642\/revisions\/7683"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}