I’ve been waiting for Thanksgiving for a long time. Sixteen years, to be exact. In fact, do you realize the wait between Grindhouse and Thanksgiving was longer than the wait between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace? That’s sort of mind-boggling. Let me tell ya folks, it was worth the wait. Director Eli Roth has given horror fans something to be thankful for.
After a Black Friday sale at a big box store ends in tragedy, a small New England town tries to move on. One year later, a guy dresses up in a pilgrim outfit and begins offing the people he blames for instigating the riot. Before long, he sets up a table for his victims and serves them revenge on a silver platter.
Thanksgiving is a well-oiled slasher full of gory set pieces and finely crafted suspense sequences. The kills include someone cut in half, decapitations, head twisting, a trampoline death, corn cob holders to the ears, death by table saw, bludgeoning, and a woman cooked alive like a giant turkey. It’s the opening carnage-fueled Walmart massacre that’s most effective though. (It almost plays like the Saving Private Ryan version of a slasher movie). I especially liked the way Roth stacks the deck with obnoxious characters so that when it comes time for the axe to come down on them, you can’t wait till they get their just desserts.
Despite the gory goodness Roth serves up, I kind of missed the down and dirty aesthetic that hallmarked the trailer in Grindhouse. I guess it’s not much of a complaint, but the movie just looks too slick at times, and feels more like a post-Scream slasher than the early ‘80s one depicted in the trailer. (Also, some of the best moments from the old trailer are toned down and/or missing here, sadly.) I mean, as good as it is (and don’t get me wrong, this is certainly a crowd-pleaser), I don’t think it would crack my Top 3 Grindhouse universe movies or my Top 5 Roth films. That just goes to show how good the man’s body of work is. The King don’t miss.
That’s where my bellyaching ends. Thanksgiving is a lot of fun. I saw it with a bunch of friends, and we all had a blast. You don’t get a chance to see a gory holiday-themed slasher on the big screen very often, so we have to support them every chance we get. Fortunately, the flick is doing decent enough business, which makes me hopeful that we’ll hear Rob Zombie announce a feature-length version of his Grindhouse trailer, Werewolf Women of the SS any day now.
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