Thanksgiving: Mean, Nasty, Gory and Funny. ⭐⭐⭐

By Rob Ryan

Thanksgiving as a holiday and as an institution in that o so wonderful United States asks us to be grateful for something and for me its the fact that all the years of criticising modern horror movies, for their restraint in both violence and sadisticness, finally here comes a movie that is inverse of mainstream horror (Mainly produced by Jason Blum) produced in the past decade or more. Thanksgiving is gory with a capital G. It is brutal and cruel all the way through that you forget how threadbare and cookie-cutter the characters are.

The films brutal and violent nature should come as no shock as this is the latest effort from Eli Roth who films are infamous for breaking the boundaries for even the most desensitised to violence and gore. Especially in his earlier work from the likes of Cabin Fever to Hostel. The film originated as a fake trailer shown in Grindhouse, the horror anthology movie produced by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez paying homage to exploitation movies of old.

The story is as follows, in the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts (The birthplace of Thanksgiving) a local supermarket on Black Friday is rundown with angry shoppers wanting to barge in the store and take all they can get their hands on. While on their way to the movies, five friends make a stop to buy a new iPhone, They get into the back door thanks to our protagonist Jessica (Nell Verlaque) being the daughter of the CEO and owner (Rick Hoffman) when her friends indulge in the new products and provoke the people standing on the outside, they break in the store and all hell breaks loose. Windows are smashed. People are trampled to death, heads are smashed in, scalps are ripped off and Jessica's boyfriend and star of the school baseball team(Jalen Thomas Brooks) gets his hand twisted and dislocated in the riot. All it takes is the town's sheriff (Patrick Dempsey) to fire his gun in the air to put an end to the madness.

Now it's one year later and the town and its residents have washed their hands of all responsibility, including the rioters who have carried on with their lives as normal, the CEO still plans to carry on with the Black Friday sale despite backlash from previous members of staff and Jessica's friends don't take much notice of the Facebook account going by "TheJohnCaver" named after the founder of the holiday tagging them in ominous posts. But then very soon closer to Black Friday, people start dying in quick succession by a killer dressed in pilgrim clothes and a John Caver Mask, with Jessica and her friends of comic stereotypes getting tagged in every new post showing a dinner table with the killer's victims, heads and limbs being the subject of this particular meal, why non of the posts are deleted for violation of TOS I have no idea.

I won't get into too much detail the gruesome detail of these deaths scenes but if you think you've seen everything in the trailer, just wait, Thanksgiving doesn't hold back. So much so I had a hard time holding in reacting with a yelp or an "ohh" loudly just to not draw to much attention to myself in the cinema. The film is at its best in its build-up to these deaths as you are not sure how this killer is going to decapitate his next victim. Just as when you think you have it all mapped in your head the movie does something more brutal and more creative than you would've expected.

I also had a bit of fun trying to figure out the killer as most of the characters we see have some sort of motive that makes them the suspect, could it be the manager of the store that night (Ty Olson) who's wife (Gina Gershon) was brutally killed thanks to a trolly wheel being caught in her hair thus ripping her scalp open, could it be Bobby who's dream of becoming a baseball super star where cut short and now has become a recluse, refusing to interact with his friends including his own girlfriend, or maybe it could be Jessica's new Boyfriend (Milo Manheim) as he seems like he's ready to cause a school shooting at the first sign of conflict. All I'll say is when it does get to its reveal, it is not far off from who you would expect but it doesn't make it any less satisfying.

From a screenplay and character standpoint, the movie isn't anything to write home about. All of Jessica's friends are so annoying and unlikeable that you don't understand why she continues to hang out with them even after the events of last year. They are not very well developed either and essentially become nothing more than cannon fodder, We have two jock Baseball star's who throw hissy fits when their championship game gets cancelled, and we have their girlfriends of hot vapid blondes. One of them (Addison Rae) looks almost identical to our lead character to a point I had a hard time telling them apart. Jessica is of course the straight girl of the group and the only voice of reason. Almost as if she's set up as the final girl in the films climax and is there gonna be a sad back story involving a dead parent? of course there is!

Granted these are qualities that I imagine most of the target audience are not going into this movie for but maybe a moment of reflection where the characters accept some level of responsibility for their actions, as the killer is blaming them for what happened on that day. Even a moment of denial after a moment of introspection could have given them a layer of sympathy or the opposite before they become next in the killer's menu.

Regardless, Thanksgiving still succeeds as a guilty pleasure as well as a fun throwback slasher flick that doesn't get made very often. With horrific gory scenes along with some occasional moments of genuine suspense, well-timed jump scares that had me flinching in my seat, and a climax that is as funny and amusing as it is cruel and brutal. For the squeamish, you may need not apply but for horror fans it's a fun time. It also make me grateful that I don't live in a place that celebrates it every year.

Thanksgiving is out in UK cinemas now.