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Movie Review: Thanksgiving

Mike Tyrkus
Neil Robles, Charlie Storey, Beatrice Trang, Hannah Storey, Nick Peters, Christopher Creamer, and J. Timothy Hunt in "Thanksgiving"

Neil Robles, Charlie Storey, Beatrice Trang, Hannah Storey, Nick Peters, Christopher Creamer, and J. Timothy Hunt in "Thanksgiving."

At first glance, one may be wary of the new horror film Thanksgiving, thinking that it may portend future offerings such as The Groundhog Day Massacre or even The Revenge of the Tooth Fairy, but one need not be concerned of those coming to fruition because this holiday-themed film is such a turkey unto itself that it may have effectively killed the genre before it was even created.

One year after a riot on Black Friday results in tragedy in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the town’s residents begin disappearing one by one in what appear to be revenge killings aimed at those most culpable for the massacre one year prior. But, of course, something far more sinister is at play than a sadistic pilgrim killing the town’s less-than-innocent inhabitants.

Revisiting the fake trailer segment from Grindhouse (2007) and elongating the short produced the same year, director Eli Roth attempts to develop an entire coherent film from a laughable and often bewildering premise. Along with screenwriter Jeff Rendell, director Roth concocts a tale that feels as though it desperately wants to tread in the same self-aware waters as Wes Craven’s Scream (1996), but instead ends up adrift in a lost and empty story that careens from one predictable pratfall to the next without creating any sense of horror or humor along the way.

While the film does its best to create a strong female lead with Nell Verlaque’s Jessica, it all amounts to little more than a parody of other more competent variations of the same theme. Even supporting characters like Patrick Dempsey’s hapless Sheriff Newlon seems far too inept to be real, adding to an overall feeling that nothing here is being taken too seriously.

Perhaps if that had been the whole approach of Thanksgiving, then it might have proven far more effective. Instead, the result is a plodding and thoroughly unenjoyable assault on an audience that may ultimately wish it had opted to stay home and eat leftovers than partake in this reheated celluloid mess.

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Mike Tyrkus

Editor in Chief at CinemaNerdz.com
An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.

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