Thanksgiving starts with a fantastic opening scene. The Black Friday shopping mayhem scene is straight out of South Park, with crazed shoppers rampling people to death in gruesome ways over a free waffle maker. That scene is perfectly acted, with all performers giving a spot on impression of awful greedy trash people. That scene has something to say.
The rest of the film starts off as your average "I know what you did last summer" style revenge slasher with an unknown killer in a pilgrom costume stalking and killing the people responsible for the opening scene Black Friday tragedy.
Towards the third act, the movie further devolves into needless, evil spirited torture porn.
A central problem is the main characters, who are a chore to endure. All except the main girl (who seemingly has just one facial expression) and the Russian girl are awful. Especially the males. For a while I wondered if the director / writer were on a dare or pulling a prank by having every single line have the F-word in it. But then a few lines without it showed up. A pity, that would have been more clever than what we got. We are left with intensely unlikeable protagonists, waiting for them to be picked off one by one.
The film barely gives us any hints to who the killer is, what in particular he's motivated by, and in the end pulls a random character out of the hat. The only reason I knew it wasn't one of the teens was that Gina Gershon had a brief appearance and death scene in the opening, so I knew the killer had to be connected to her. Otherwise why cast a name actor in a no name role?
When the reveal does happen, it's ridiculously stupid, and most of all, the needless cruelty and sadism of the killer goes way beyond revenge. In particular one scene involving the centerpiece of the revenge is sickening, case in point being it's something that happened during the October 7th Hamas attack. It's so messed up that it ruins the tone of what should be a fun, scary holiday slasher / horror film. Eli Roth really needs to get his demons under control. Pushing the boundaries is one thing, but missing the tone of your movie is another.
Oddly enough, the gore effects are quite bad. For a movie that goes so deep into gore, I was surprised it didn't look better.
Speaking of things that look bad: the Killer's mask. This is a big one, since a slasher film lives and dies by its killer. The killer here looks boring. Like a low budget V for Vendetta, he's neither scary nor iconic. They must have realized the former, because midway during the movie, he burns his mask for no reason other than he knows he's in a movie and wants to look scarier.
The film moves at a brisk pace, and thankfully the obligatory scenes of characters nervously tiptoeing through corridors with the Killer lying in wait aren't 5 minutes long like in older 80s and 90s Slashers where the narrative ground to a total halt before every kill scene. They throw in a few chase scenes to mix things up as well.
Here's something I'm thankful for: Thanksgiving didn't bore me. It annoyed me with it's nasty characters, it repulsed me with the it's mean spiritedness, bit it didn't bore me.
Had they kept the tone and social commentary from the opening scene, they could have had a real classic here. As it stands, this is a missed opportunity let down by a weak script and a director who's pathological need to shock undermines his talent.
The rest of the film starts off as your average "I know what you did last summer" style revenge slasher with an unknown killer in a pilgrom costume stalking and killing the people responsible for the opening scene Black Friday tragedy.
Towards the third act, the movie further devolves into needless, evil spirited torture porn.
A central problem is the main characters, who are a chore to endure. All except the main girl (who seemingly has just one facial expression) and the Russian girl are awful. Especially the males. For a while I wondered if the director / writer were on a dare or pulling a prank by having every single line have the F-word in it. But then a few lines without it showed up. A pity, that would have been more clever than what we got. We are left with intensely unlikeable protagonists, waiting for them to be picked off one by one.
The film barely gives us any hints to who the killer is, what in particular he's motivated by, and in the end pulls a random character out of the hat. The only reason I knew it wasn't one of the teens was that Gina Gershon had a brief appearance and death scene in the opening, so I knew the killer had to be connected to her. Otherwise why cast a name actor in a no name role?
When the reveal does happen, it's ridiculously stupid, and most of all, the needless cruelty and sadism of the killer goes way beyond revenge. In particular one scene involving the centerpiece of the revenge is sickening, case in point being it's something that happened during the October 7th Hamas attack. It's so messed up that it ruins the tone of what should be a fun, scary holiday slasher / horror film. Eli Roth really needs to get his demons under control. Pushing the boundaries is one thing, but missing the tone of your movie is another.
Oddly enough, the gore effects are quite bad. For a movie that goes so deep into gore, I was surprised it didn't look better.
Speaking of things that look bad: the Killer's mask. This is a big one, since a slasher film lives and dies by its killer. The killer here looks boring. Like a low budget V for Vendetta, he's neither scary nor iconic. They must have realized the former, because midway during the movie, he burns his mask for no reason other than he knows he's in a movie and wants to look scarier.
The film moves at a brisk pace, and thankfully the obligatory scenes of characters nervously tiptoeing through corridors with the Killer lying in wait aren't 5 minutes long like in older 80s and 90s Slashers where the narrative ground to a total halt before every kill scene. They throw in a few chase scenes to mix things up as well.
Here's something I'm thankful for: Thanksgiving didn't bore me. It annoyed me with it's nasty characters, it repulsed me with the it's mean spiritedness, bit it didn't bore me.
Had they kept the tone and social commentary from the opening scene, they could have had a real classic here. As it stands, this is a missed opportunity let down by a weak script and a director who's pathological need to shock undermines his talent.