The Reel Review
A year after a Thanksgiving night stampede at a big box retailer in Plymouth, Massachusetts left several people dead, an ax-wielding, pilgrim-masked killer seeks revenge against those he feels were responsible. Nell Verlaque (Big Shot), Patrick Dempsey and Gina Gershon star in this horror/comedy whodunit from co-writer/director Eli Roth (The Green Inferno, Hostel).
From some gruesome, over the top, practical effects-laden kills, some exceptionally cheesy dialogue and Dempsey’s god-awful Massachusetts accent, Thanksgiving is intended to be both a scary and funny homage to 1980s-era slasher films like Friday the 13th, Graduation Day and Nightmare on Elm Street. It succeeds with only moderate success.
That said, there are a few pretty hilarious, gnarly moments – like when the killer is basting and preparing to cook his victims or even sticking a meat thermometer in one of them in the oven, but the unfocused tone and Roth’s sloppy storytelling makes Thanksgiving only a mediocre slasher film at best.
REEL FACTS
• Thanksgiving is the third movie, after 2010’s Machete and 2011’s Hobo with a Shotgun, based on one of the five mock trailers seen in the break between the two films in Roth’s 2007 double-feature Grindhouse. The other two fake trailers were Don’t and Werewolf Women of the SS.
• Director Eli Roth has a cameo in Thanksgiving as the journalist questioning the spate of murders.
• Thanksgiving was filmed over a five-week period in Toronto, Canada.
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