Eli Roth is home for the holidays with enough fiendish fun and ripped flesh to send horror fans to theaters multiple times between now and Thanksgiving.
The “Hostel” director hasn’t touched his signature genre in almost a decade, but he’s been cooking up his latest film with writer Jeff Rendell since they were teenagers — and it’s more than worth the wait. The duo first realized their childhood concept of an eponymous “Thanksgiving” slasher as a fake trailer appearing in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s “Grindhouse” in 2007. That cinematic morsel immediately stirred up cries for a full-blown adaptation (this marks the third time one of those segments has been expanded, after “Machete” and “Hobo with a Shotgun”), and for its annual re-watchers, the feature-length “Thanksgiving” is exactly what you’d expect.
Part “Thankskilling,” part “Scream,” this modern horror-comedy is a brilliant retrofitting of the moments you already know and love from the “Grindhouse” version (cheerleader trampoline stab!), serving up the original idea cranked to high heat over an hour-and-46-minute running time. For the uninitiated, “Thanksgiving” is a no-holds-barred seasonal horror akin to a gorier “Halloween” or “My Bloody Valentine,” chronicling the antics of a murderous pilgrim attacking the woefully awful people of Plymouth, Massachusetts ahead of America’s most nauseating autumnal holiday.
When a Black Friday department store riot leaves three dead and dozens more injured, the masked killer assumes the name of real-life colonist John Carver and returns the following Thanksgiving to hunt down the brawl’s greedy instigators one by one, getting revenge with a motive that’s not clear until the bitter end. The brutally funny game of cat and mouse (chef and poultry?) that follows would feel ripped straight from John Carpenter’s heyday if it weren’t for a social media-centric plot and the casting of TikTok star Addison Rae as one of its main victims — contemporary flecks that bring out the palpable danger of Roth’s willingness to go there combined with the improved realism of 2023 special effects.
Sheriff Newlon (Patrick Dempsey) and teen hero Jessica (Nell Verlaque) rush to uncover the murderer’s identity while bodies mount and gruesome Instagram posts lay out seating plans for those yet to be slaughtered. The money-grubbing store owner/Jessica’s dad (Rick Hoffman), his loathsome wife/Jessica’s stepmom (Karen Cliche), and a gaggle of Plymouth townsfolk and Jessica’s friends are on the guest list-turned-chopping block — and their traditionalist hunter has one sick sense of meal prep. Electric carving knives, meat cleavers, and even corn cob holders await the capitalists who pissed off Carver, and though only one of those creative kills rises to the level of extreme queasiness achieved in Roth’s “The Green Inferno” or “Hostel: Part II,” “Thanksgiving” proves a smarter slasher for the restraint.
With more time dedicated to table-setting than gorging on gore, Roth and Rendell create a living-breathing corner of the United States that’s actually worth terrorizing. The people populating this fictional version of Plymouth don’t feel “real” per se, but they’re toxically relatable and the complicated relationship they have with Thanksgiving is as politically charged as it is annoyingly pointless in life. From the sensitive high school hottie lamenting the plight of the Native Americans in English class to the dude who, even bleeding from his neck, will stop at nothing for a discounted waffle maker, these idiots are languishing in a recognizable, first world hellscape with or without a killer on the loose.
“Thanksgiving” isn’t calling its namesake occasion good or bad, but it is satirizing the annual festivities for exactly what they are: a supposed cause for gratitude often celebrated with feasting, fighting, and an unquenchable urge to say “fuck this” and go watch a horror movie. That nuanced message is a significant step-up in terms of Roth’s ability to land cultural criticism when compared to some of his earlier work (shout out to the wildly divisive “Cabin Fever” kicker), and it’s cut with a winking genre humor that entertains more than exhausts. The scrumptiously grisly treat is knowing without ever going meta and direct without being basic, vaulting off genre touchstones and Roth hallmarks to land as many surprising jokes as it does sudden scares. One too many quips about Mark Cuban and ample use of Instagram’s livestream function tether it in time, possibly to the detriment of its viability as a lasting classic. But its grindhouse credits are some of the most authentic in recent memory, and there’s bonus timelessness points awarded to any soundtrack featuring both The Waitresses and Misfits.
The “Thanksgiving” cast complements Rendell’s smart script in their flexible performances, playing layered characters that are introduced efficiently but still run circles around the vignette-driven archetypes of something like 2018’s “Halloween” reboot. Some have better northeastern accents than others, and certain characters are thin or go under-used. Local partier and arms dealer McCarty (Joe Delfin) is a major highlight, who would have benefited from more scenes if only to explain more ridiculous guns to Jessica and her pal Scuba (Gabriel Davenport); and the cutesy, ear-muff wearing Yulia (Jenna Warren) and her dad Boris (Frank J. Zupancic) are entertaining enough to merit a film all their own. Jessica is smart but a smidge one-note and could use more personality as a final girl. But Verlaque works and the casting is cohesive, creating an organic crop of meat sacks around our heroine whose moments of frozen fear make for black comedy gold.
Yes, “Thanksgiving” is decidedly campy, but it’s also grounded in an internal logic that rarely lets up and allows enough mysterious gray area to keep you guessing. You’ll feel some kind of way about each of the main character’s fates, but the opening act makes every person’s targeting fair game — and justifies even their stupidest decisions with an unspoken understanding that most people in this consumerist town were never smart enough to survive a slasher anyway. The theatricality of our killer is exquisitely themed, making ridiculous ends for these ridiculous victims that work so well a “50% off” sale/dismemberment joke feels genius in the moment. With Rendell as his writer, Roth has achieved his funniest film and successfully tied that career-high to an excuse for its annual revisitation.
There are some pacing issues in the third and fourth acts, punctuated by the sense that we don’t get quite enough time with the film’s disgusting centerpiece kill. But any dissatisfaction you might feel seems easily rectified with a rewatch. A loving homage to B-movies of last century that’s perfectly attuned to current genre appetites, “Thanksgiving” will get a visceral reaction out of you even if it’s not as graphic as you might expect from the guy behind some of the so-called “toture porn” genre’s most infamous staples. The gore is tempered enough to make walk-outs unlikely and you’ll be able to keep your eyes on the screen long enough to enjoy the whodunnit behind the antagonistic action. With less than a week between the film’s release and Thanksgiving day, confident ticket-holders might consider making their plans for a second showing ahead of time. Served hot, Roth’s “Thanksgiving” is so good you’ll lick it off your fingers… or someone else’s.
Grade: A-
A TriStar and Sony Pictures release, “Thanksgiving” opens in theaters on Friday, November 17.
