Featured Photo by IMDB
Story by Marshal Clemmer
Holiday horror stories have been around for a long time. From “A Christmas Carol” being one the oldest surviving holiday ghost stories about the effects of having bad morals and ethics. To a more modern day take in this genre, where in films such as “Halloween” and “Black Christmas,” it is easy to predict the slasher’s next victim based on that character’s terrible actions, such as premarital sex.
With that said, 16-years after its parody trailer debut, Eli Roth’s “Thanksgiving” finally comes out of the oven with a thin social commentary glaze of the evils of Black Friday’s capitalism greed and a cliché side order of revenge. And should have gone back into the oven for a little longer.
Originally as an over-the-top, comedic fake trailer, Roth’s “Thanksgiving” played in Quintin Tarantino’s and Robert Rodreguez’s film “Grindhouse,” which was a tribute to 70’s Grindhouse theaters that mainly show low-budget, gore and blood filled, exploitation films for adults. The other fake trailers, “Hobo with a Shotgun” and “Machete,” in “Grindhouse” later turned into full length movies.
“Thanksgiving” feels as if the screenwriters, Jeff Rendell and Eli Roth, wrote a tongue-in-cheek horror flick that pokes fun at the very idea of a horror movie based around the American Thanksgiving holiday.
But alongside this, they also are trying to make it legit based on past traumatic Black Friday incidents of people being trampled to death or seriously injured. Where upon the audience will feel some sympathy on why our Halloween’s Micheal Myers and 1600’s Pilgrim mash-up looking villain seeks revenge on our unfortunate group of Gen Z highschoolers, in all their cliché high school glory. It felt that our filmmakers couldn’t decide if this film should be made campy or be taken seriously.
Its most memorable scene is the opening, where everything goes wrong on a Black Friday midnight opening sale at this Walmart-not-Walmart megastore. This is where the incident that fuels our Thanksgiving themed villain’s revenge occurs, where crazed, impatient shoppers crash though the storefront. One of two of the security guards gets trampled to death, while the other runs away. A shard of glass from the remains of the storefront fatally stabs a shopper in the neck, but they’re too busy trying to get a great deal on a waffle iron that they can’t be bothered going to ER. Unfortunately, another shopper pulls the waffle iron from their cold, dead hands.
Meanwhile the dumb jock teen in our group protagonists livestreams the carnage and cares more about getting likes from his viewers than the wellbeing of his fellow shoppers.
Every scene after this feels and looks like one that we’ve already seen before as it pays homage to other cult classic horror movies that horror aficionados would recognize. Everything from “Halloween” to “Jason X” to “Friday the 13th: Part 1” to even some obscured ones, such as “Class of 1984.” But this time, it all takes place in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Do these horror tributes pay off? I would argue only if you wanted to go see a horror, parody movie about the unintended consequences of Black Friday capitalism greed. But if you want a fun, turn-your-brain-off and enjoy-the-ride slasher film to watch this upcoming Thanksgiving weekend, Eli Roth’s “Thanksgiving” is a must watch.
To contact Lifestyles Editor Destiny Mizell, email lifestyles@mtsusidelines.com. For more news, visit www.mtsusidelines.com, or follow us on Facebook at MTSU Sidelines or on X at @MTSUSidelines.
