“No one appreciates subtlety anymore. To go viral, you really need to hit people over the head.”
Thanksgiving is a silly premise. Originally a fake trailer in Grindhouse, it boasted the tagline, “This year, there will be no leftovers.” This sets the kind of tone this movie is going to take, at least for the most part.
The movie starts on Thanksgiving day, where a department store owner makes the unwise decision to open his store on the holiday instead of waiting until Friday morning. It’s this choice that sets the plot in motion, as feral shoppers bumrush the door, beginning a spree of violent murders inside the store of customers and workers alike. This became known as the RightMart Massacre. Learning absolutely nothing from the prior year’s events, the store owner decides to open the store again on Thanksgiving day. This year though, a masked killer is intent on repaying the store’s owners and shoppers alike for their carelessness and greed.
This story works well as a satire, and in many moments, it certainly feels like one. The visceral splatter of the deaths in RightMart set the tone, and many of the later killings carry the spirit of the original fake trailer. Even the trampoline makes an appearance, and no Thanksgiving is complete without the turkey.
It’s in its more serious moments that the movie falls flat. Our main character Jessica is in the middle of a family crisis, as her dad (the owner of RightMart) has remarried after her mother’s untimely death. On top of that, she’s in the middle of a love triangle that never really resolves, but exists only to give us potential red herrings about who the killer might be. All her friends are flat boring stereotypes: jock, frat boy, popular girl, etc. This could have worked if the film played this satirically, but we’re supposed to care about these people. It’s hard to stay engaged with the plot when the cast is mostly cardboard cutouts of the worst people you’ve seen on TikTok.
It’s the over-the-top kills where this movie shines. They are as goofy as they are grotesque, and boy are they creative. Some of the deaths in this really made me squirm, and even the ones that didn’t were extremely entertaining. The gore is absolutely relentless with intestines, viscera, and blood being sprayed by the gallon. This movie leans heavily towards the splatter side of the slasher genre and is definitely not for the weak-willed.
The performances in this are serviceable, but in the film’s defense, that’s all they really need to be. Rick Hoffman (Suits) and Patrick Dempsey (Grey’s Anatomy) are two obvious standouts, but Nell Verlaque (Big Shot) should be mentioned since she basically carries the main cast. Even though she isn’t given much to do, she still portrays a sympathetic and compelling lead.
This is a fun slasher overall, but it’s not Scream. I think it’s aiming for the same kind of biting satire, but it just doesn’t pick a lane. It brings up some interesting ideas for critique, namely consumerism and the dehumanization of social media, but it doesn’t really do anything with it. While it’s still worth watching if you’re a fan of the genre, fans looking for anything deeper will be left hungry for more.