I live in Canada and thanksgiving here is not only in a different month than the US, it seems to be a less... feral tradition overall lol. We don't have the looming obscenity of that Black Friday nonsense hovering around the same weekend and the overall custom is just... not as psychotic. Eli Roth fully embraces that American version of the holiday in his bonkers seasonal slasher Thanksgiving, a fleshed out (literally) expansion on the faux trailer that Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez commissioned him to do for their Midnite double feature GrindHouse. The result is lots of fun and definitely Roth's best work so far as a filmmaker. Fun really is the key word here and it's what seems to have been missing from his work in horror overall so far, with the exception of Cabin Fever, his second best film. In dour, unpleasant failures like Hostel, Green Inferno and the deplorable Knock Knock he just seemed to be coming from a place of malcontent. Thanksgiving is a party though, as any slasher set around a holiday should be, and it not only satirically skewers the rabid consumerism of Black Friday in a shocking opening sequence, but also pokes subtle fun at the woke millennial sentiment around whining and cancelling Thanksgiving itself these days. The gory mayhem is off the rails here, some of the downright outrageous moments from the fake trailer make it into the feature intact and Roth assembles a fine cast including Gina Gershon (sadly, very briefly), Rick Hoffman, Addison Rae and angelic, scene stealing Final Girl Nell Verlaque. I still maintain that Roth should have kept Michael Biehn in the sheriff's role he casted him in for the faux trailer to preserve the horror aura, instead of picking the Grey's Anatomy dude instead but I can see how that guy could be more bankable to the superficial filmgoing demographic aimed at filling the seats. In any case though it's a great horror flick, the killer is genuinely creepy at times, suspense is orchestrated very well, there a a few incredibly effective jump scares that are truly unpredictable moments and the kills.... well they are something else, a grisly parade of well thought out murders that frequently push the boundaries of shock and awe. Tons of fun.
Review of Thanksgiving
