Thanksgiving (2023) * *

 

Directed by:  Eli Roth

Starring:  Patrick Dempsey, Nell Verlaque, Rick Hoffman, Gina Gershon, Milo Manheim, Addison Rae, Tim Dillon, Jenna Warren, Jalen Thomas Brooks

I was unaware Eli Roth created a fake trailer for Thanksgiving as part of Quentin Tarantino's/Robert Rodriguez's 2007 Grindhouse.  Now, we have the actual movie, and since nearly every other holiday has a horror saga attached to it, why not Thanksgiving?   For a while, I was enjoying Thanksgiving in a way I was entertained by the better Scream movies, but then gore and blood overtake the popcorn fun.  I allude to John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) as the tentpole for horror films, where suspense overrides everything and the killings themselves take on a certain restraint.  Now, the movies have become obsessed with the rising body counts and how gruesomely the killings can be depicted.   

Thanksgiving starts off almost satirically as an angry Black Friday mob waits impatiently for RiteMart, a Wal Mart knockoff superstore open Thanksgiving night, to open its doors.  Soon, the frothing consumers invade the store, causing mayhem and killing shoppers and innocent bystanders in manners which would be considered tame when compared to the rest of the movie's murders.  Cut to one year later, and the owner of RiteMart, Thomas Wright (Hoffman) fully intends to open again on Thanksgiving night despite last year's massacre.  Videos of the event leaked online and the town's sheriff (Dempsey) tries in vain to capture a serial killer who wears a John Carver (the first Massachusetts governor) mask and kills those associated with the previous year's violence one by one.  

One of the intended victims is Jessica (Verlaque), Wright's daughter whose former boyfriend Bobby (Brooks) left town after last year's events and is now a prime suspect because the killings started when he returned to Plymouth.  We naturally know he isn't the killer, and the movie teases plenty of potential suspects, including the store's former manager Mitch (Dillon), whose wife was among those killed last year by the mob of angry customers.  Why did they storm the store like the French stormed the Bastille?  The first 100 were to receive free waffle irons, if memory serves.  

However, as Thanksgiving moves toward its conclusion, the movie simply becomes a bloodbath and when a victim is baked inside of an oven and the killer stages a Thanksgiving feast in which the victim is the main course, I tapped out.  Was that the intent?  If it was, it worked, but why do we need movies that are simply trying to outdo the Saw series as torture porn and cringeworthy executions?  The only reason I'm awarding Thanksgiving two stars is because, for a while, it was working as a whodunit, but then it devolved into a bloody mess.