It’s only about two minutes and 25 seconds, yet it remains the single best thing Eli Roth has ever done. Tucked right in the middle of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino‘s ambitious, mondo-grimy Grindhouse (2007) is a trailer for a fake movie called Thanksgiving. You probably remember it, if you remember much about that wax Forty-Deuce museum with a pulse. It’s the end of November, someone is murdering horny teens, kind old ladies and, er, hornier teens in the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. The killer is dressed like a pilgrim. The vibe is primo Eighties slasher. A trampoline and a butcher knife are paired to good use. If you grew up consuming as many VHS slasher flicks as you could stomach, you will recognize the grotty visuals, the sleazy sub-Carpenter synth score, the unsettling basso profundo narration. The result is such a great tribute to that era of fleapit horror flicks that you would swear you actually saw it on a triple feature with Terror Train and Prom Night back in the day. And given that any exposure to Roth’s work lasting over five minutes can cause flu-like symptoms, it’s the perfect, concise vehicle for his genre-savant knowledge base, his throwback obsessions and his incessant need to shock. Check it out.
So yes, we’ll admit that when we heard His Rothness was doing a feature-length take on that trailer — or at least something inspired by his contribution to that film-nerd folie à deux — we had a momentary lapse of hope. Sure, his back catalog is a graveyard of failed attempts at recreating Fangoria‘s greatest photo-spreads and resurrecting that ol’ splatter feeling. He’s far better at branding himself as some next-gen “master of horror” than he is at actually making horror movies. The less said about that D.O.A. Death Wish remake, the better. But the idea of him and his co-writer Jeff Rendell expanding on this sick joke seemed promising, and a potential way for him to harness a genuine love for yesteryear’s gorefest that would pay off. Right?
Sigh.
What’s that quote about the definition of insanity, when you repeat the same thing again and again, yet somehow expect a different result? This long-playing Thanksgiving movie may borrow a bunch of images from that fake trailer — yes, the trampoline/knife gag is here, though only half as foul; ditto a parade’s turkey mascot getting the ax — but it’s not one-tenth as clever, as creative or as cutting, in every sense of the word, as that Grindhouse snippet. Nor does it fetishize a vintage late-Seventies/early-Eighties drive-in movie look, which would have at least given us something visually interesting. What was a smart, scuzzed-out riff on ye olde wave of holiday-themed horror movies (Halloween! My Bloody Valentine! Silent Night, Deadly Night!) is now just a badly-made, barely-functional mediocrity, filled with half-baked homages and lazy filmmaking. In other words, it’s just another Eli Roth production. Why did we think this one would be unique?
It’s Thanksgiving evening, and most families in Plymouth, Massachusetts, are sitting down to gobble up turkey dinners — but not the Collins’. Mitch (Ty Olsson) is a manager at the superstore RightMart, which has decided to kick off Black Friday early. He’s got to go in and make sure everything runs smoothly, much to the chagrin of his wife Amanda (Gina Gershon) and his best friend Eric (Patrick “Sexiest Man Alive” Dempsey), the local sheriff. Meanwhile, across town, the Wright family is also having their meal interrupted. Thomas (Rick Hoffman, a.k.a. Suits‘ oily Louis Litt) owns the RightMart chain, and he and his new wife, Kathleen (Karen Cliche) want to head down to watch the fun. Their daughter, Jessica (Nell Verlaque) has already excused herself, along with her boyfriend Bobby (Jalen Thomas Brooks), to go cruise town with their high school friends.
Everyone ends up at the store, where a rabid mob is ready to snatch all of those half-price deals and free waffle irons. Things spiral out of control, the crowd goes wild — really wild — and the whole thing turns into a massacre. It’s the one set piece in Thanksgiving that shows any kind of panache or proper sense of terror, as shoppers start causing gruesome fatalities. It’s over before it’s even begun, unfortunately, though it manages to maim several of our heroes and kill off a major character. The town is traumatized.
Things spiral out of control, the crowd goes wild — really wild — and the whole thing turns into a massacre.
A year later, Thomas declares that they’ll close the store on Thanksgiving evening this time around, but he still wants to go hard on the promotion and erase the memory of what happened. This isn’t good enough for a lot of the townsfolk, who are still angry over the tragedy. One person in particular is mad as hell. That would be the one who wears a John Carver mask, dresses like a pilgrim, and is picking off people who were shopping that night, one by one. Plus, he keeps tagging Jessica and their friends in Instagram posts of an empty, yet fully set dinner table. That can’t be good.
What follows is one undercooked feast of gruesome kills, final-girl pursuits, a few mild digs at capitalism, red herrings, blood-red interior decorating courtesy of decapitations, the occasional nod to that trailer, and a lot of dead air. If you’re even semi-fluent in Slasher Mysteries 101, you will likely put together the whodunit. And you’ll also puzzle over why, despite the sound and fury of Roth putting his cast through their slasher-flick paces and spilling gallons of Karo syrup, this feels so devoid of frights or fun. “There will be no leftovers this year,” says the killer, parroting the tagline from that original clip. Which is high irony: This whole thing is nothing but leftovers. It’s just that the cook couldn’t even be bothered to reheat them. Thanksgiving is less a movie than a messy attempt to coast off an oldie-but-goodie one-off without adding anything to the party. It can 100 percent go stuff itself.
