It’s a new week and we’re going to kick it off with the first themed week of this year’s Horrortoberfest season. I’m doing a full week of non-Halloween holiday themed horror starting with Eli Roth’s full length feature version of the fictitious trailer he made for Grindhouse. Having never actually seen Grindhouse or the trailer this was based on, I only really knew about one very particular kill in this movie before going in and I have thoughts on that but first, the standard plot summary.

Thanksgiving starts on Thanksgiving day in Plymouth, Massachusetts with the local Wal*Mart equivalent having an early Black Friday sale that night. Things go horribly wrong when a riot breaks out and the ensuing carnage ends up killing multiple people and leaving the town’s star pitcher with a broken arm. Fast forward a year later and someone is stalking the streets of Plymouth in a John Carver mask punishing the people that they deemed responsible for the tragedy. Who could this masked killer be and will our heroine be able to stop them before everyone she loves is Carver-ed up. (I would like to apologize for that joke and won’t happen again)

Roth is a very hit or miss director for me with more misses than hits. I was not especially hopefully that this would be anything more than watchable but I found myself enjoying it, for the most part. I think part of it is that the movie ends up being a fairly straightforward slasher that leans into the mystery/who dunnit aspect. Playing with the format and giving some decent twists that don’t feel stupid or forced means the movie can deliver a really good example of the slasher genre. It has the great practical gore effects that you would expect and doesn’t end up trying to be something it isn’t. I do, however, want to take a second and talk about the one more infamous kill in this so I guess Spoilers in the next couple paragraphs if you don’t want to know about any of the deaths.

The step-mother, Kathleen, is killed by being cooked alive like a turkey. A horrific death to be sure but also one that fits the theme so I get it. The thing that gets me is how the movie lingers on it. Kathleen wakes up while being basted and covered in salt and pepper. She escapes and flees for a long time. We stick with her for an extended period as she continues to get the better of the killer until her luck runs out and she gets put in the oven. We then linger on the death, see her begging for her life, burning as she touches the heated metal, and finally dying. I can’t help but compare this to the tanning bed scene from Final Destination 3. Similar deaths but also similar in that the camera lingers, it takes its time and makes the viewer uncomfortable.

The difference is that the tanning bed scene does it almost as a punishment for the viewer’s desire. It’s the two mean girl airheads that in a normal horror movie you would cheer as the killer decapitates them. Then the movie makes you sit with their pain and terror for so long as if to say “You wanted this. Here it is. Watch it.” The death has something to say. In Thanksgiving, we barely see Kathleen. Sure our main character doesn’t like her new step-mom but she is never shown to be especially mean or nasty. She is given the single most brutal and uncomfortable death while having almost nothing to do with the events that inspired the killing. It feels like the movie just went “She’s a step-mom and therefore bad” and then punished her for the crime of being someone’s second wife. I’m not writing a full college essay on the role of step-mother in stories but it just felt so weirdly gratuitous in a movie that otherwise didn’t do that sort of thing. It’s that “cruelty for its own sake” stuff from things like Hostel bleeding into this movie that lessens it.

That aside, I think the movie is a good choice for anyone that is a fan of the slasher genre. While I doubt the John Carver killer will be up there with the ranks of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, I do think it’s a fun movie that’s worth watching.

Score: 4 out of 5