Thanksgiving: Eli Roth, the Death of Subtlety and Why That’s Not Necessarily a Bad Thing.
Oh, Thanksgiving. As campuses begin to pre-emptively empty and thoughts move - temporarily - from projects and papers to pie and football and family drama, the mood is for the most part cheery and grateful. Well…. It’s also November, and pretty dreary around the New England area. Some of us just don’t have a very upbeat demeanor, and others of us are pretty exhausted. In the next few days, it might be a good idea to unwind a little and take some time to yourself. Maybe go to the movies…? You see where I’m going with this.
Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving just came out and I have a LOT to say about it. Other than A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, there aren’t very many Thanksgiving-themed films. Most of these that I found from a fairly cursory Google search are comedies or family dramas. So 2023’s Thanksgiving is in decidedly a different vein, following the grand slasher tradition of focusing on a masked killer hunting down a group of bland young adults. In this case, our killer is dressed as John Carver, a Pilgrim and the first governor of Plymouth County (and by law of this Massachusetts-based film, it is almost exclusively pronounced “Cahvuh”).
Primarily, this film appeals to me because of its campiness, and it feels, especially following the monumental year for horror cinema that was 2022, like the beginning of a slasher movie renaissance. Additionally, there is sort of a ridiculous New England delight to this film, or at least there was for me, who saw it with my girlfriend from Massachusetts and who has both parents from Massachusetts as well.
Besides, horror movies aren’t just for Halloween, right? As Eli Roth is quoted in an interview for IGN’s Lex Briscuso, “The intention was always to make a real slasher film. It was always to make Halloween, Black Christmas, My Bloody Valentine, April Fool’s Day, Mother’s Day, and then other slashers that we love, like the Prowler, Prom Night, Pieces, later ones like Scream.” This quote gives a sense of the broader, mostly ‘70s and ‘80s tradition of seasonal and holiday-themed slasher films in the US and Canada, a canon which Roth is clearly hoping to (and will likely succeed in) being included in.
Roth, whose previous credits include the Hostel franchise (which I could totally write a whole article on) and The Green Inferno, is a self-admitted lifelong fan of the genre and has been building up to this particular project since creating a fake Thanksgiving trailer for the Tarantino film Grindhouse in 2007. From my experience with the Hostel films, I associate Roth with the sort of douchey “bro” culture that was very late 2000s/early 2010s. However, Thanksgiving seems to really mark a graduation from that style of filmmaking. This film is brutal, don’t get me wrong (you may find yourself covering your eyes at some points), but it is not necessarily mean-spirited, as the sexual violence and bleak worldview that colored much of Roth’s past work is not at the forefront of Thanksgiving.
This film is not without its failings, though. The extended cold opening deals with a crowd crush turned massacre on Black Friday, and the film’s initial conflict revolves around critiques of consumer capitalism and corporate greed. However, that messaging soon fades into the background, favoring fun and ludicrous kills and characters, but rendering the film’s tone somewhat inconsistent. Additionally, a horror film based around a Thanksgiving-time massacre is likely bound to conjure thoughts about the inextricable relationship between the founding of this country and the genocide of indigenous peoples at the hands of European settlers. While the Pilgrims are consistently referred to (and constitute the villain’s disguise), there are no references to indigenous people in the entire film. However, given Roth’s history in making the highly controversial The Green Inferno (something of an homage to the Italian film Cannibal Holocaust), I would not trust him to approach the topic with much empathy or tact.
Overall, I highly recommend this film. I’m sure this is the kind of movie where you will know right from watching the trailer if it’s your “thing” or not (and be warned because it is pretty gnarly), but mindless, funny, and scary entertainment feels pretty necessary at this point in the year. I mean, in one instance the killer quips “Subtlety is dead - these days you really have to beat people over the head with it” while bludgeoning a character’s skull on Instagram live, and while Roth is commenting on how he sees the digital age and influencer culture (and Addison Rae is a member of the supporting cast, so there is definitely a lot to unpack), it feels like a pretty apt description for the movie itself. So I would suggest you sneak away from family dinner and watch this with your weird cousin, or round up some friends and trek to Providence Place (this is definitely a movie to watch with others - if only so you can mouth “what the ****?” to each other). Enjoy something crazy and dumb if it helps stave off the November chills.