Coming off the high of Saltburn (2023), anything would have had a really hard time being the first film after that five star beast of a film. Saying that, Thanksgiving was never going to be one of my favourites of the year, but this mediocre slasher made me eye-roll and wonder why this medium-gore film was an 18.
Plot
Thanksgiving last year saw our band of teens, including “final girl” Jessica (Nell Verlaqu), her boyfriend Bobby, and two other couples, involved in a tragic accident where a stampede at a large store, RightMart, killed and injured a number of people. The brash jock member of the group filmed the whole thing and it ends up on the internet. Oh and Jessica’s dad owns the store, this is important.
So, flash forward a year and the group of friends are down a member, Bobby, who has ghosted Jessica, following an injury during the stampede that prevents him from playing baseball. The rest are hanging out as normal, despite the fact that people literally died this time last year, until a strange person starts tagging them in social media posts that have sinister connotations.
Jessica’s dad is important in the Massachusetts town so the sherif (played by supreme DILF, Patrick Dempsey) is hot on the case when people who were responsible for some of the deaths and injuries from last year turn up dead.
Classic slasher with some Gen Z elements ensues. The killer (dressed in a pilgrim mask and hat) purses the teens and taunt them with more gory social media posts before a final, bloody showdown. And of course, there’s a parade. And a love triangle.*
*Why are so many teens in love triangles in movies and books? I wasn’t in a single love triangle as a teen! I feel cheated!
Review
Thanksgiving was mediocre at best. When I see a horror is an 18 I get excited that I’m going to see some stuff that’s seriously gory, but the actual blood and guts was pretty short-lived and looked fake.
Some of the lines were so cringe it set my teeth on edge. Like the hotly promoted like “There will be no leftovers”, did you really have to include that in actual dialogue? The acting wasn’t great either. Not that it always needs to be in a silly slasher, but it was noticeable here. I didn’t mind Nell Verlaqu as the “final girl” and I wasn’t mad at seeing the lovely face of Dempsey, but I have to admit, he’s better in a rom-com lead role, I’m not sure he’s horror material. The other teens annoyed me, which is fine, it just meant I wanted them all to suffer.
I actually thought the plot was okay. The idea that the killer had some kind of motive that related to the stampede was good, it gave you a list of possible killers to pick from. Eli Roth did try and subvert some of the horror tropes too, so I appreciated that.
The deaths were at least trying to be creative. But there were some that were almost too close to previous deaths from the Final Destination series, that I was just thinking about how much better they were done back then… and they were 15s! There was one involving a trampoline that made me wince, but the idea of the trampoline being there in the first place was so silly that it took away from it.
In conclusion, the jump scares weren’t scary, the gore was kinda lame, the deaths that were good were few and far between and the reveal was (in my opinion) obvious.
2/5 stars, if you’re into that. It angered me less than the Exorcist: Believer. So that’s a positive!
Happy Thanksgiving my American friends! Until the inevitable sequel next year…!
That Horror Chick 