THANKSGIVING – Review

Back in 2007, Quentin Tarantino rounded up some pals for a release called GRINDHOUSE, intended to re-create the experience of going to a drive-in for a schlocky double feature, complete with jingles for the snack bar and fake trailers for other movies. Funny thing about the way that turned out.

The GRINDHOUSE package did fairly well at the box office but the trailers eventually outstripped its performance by a wide margin. Robert Rodriguez’s MACHETE clip turned into two wildly successful (okay, highly successful for most, wildly for me) comedic gore-fests, with a third on the way, and boosting Danny Trejo into the stratosphere of celebrity status. HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN (great title, pretty entertaining movie) became a cultish outing for Rutger Hauer. Two other trailers stayed as such – Edgar Wright’s DON’T and Rob Zombie’s WEREWOLF WOMEN OF THE S.S. Eli Roth’s THANKSGIVING teaser preview is now the third of the quintet (HOBO wasn’t included in all versions of the GRINDHOUSE release) to spawn features.

In the others, much of what was in the trailers was repeated in the movies. Same for THANKSGIVING, though the original was set in the 1970s, and this one is current. Patrick Dempsey plays the sheriff in this holiday horror/comedy yarn. The family that owns a big box store in Plymouth, Massachusetts, opens its Black Friday sale on Thursday night, causing anger among many, and a mob of customers waiting outside to rush in for the bargains the moment the doors open. When the owner’s (Rick Hoffman) teen daughter Jess (Nell Verlaque) and some of her friends are seen through the glass doors jumping the gun, the crowd goes nuts and storms the store, killing and injuring quite a few of their fellow townsmen while fighting each other for the merch they crave.

Skip ahead a year. The disaster led to multiple lawsuits and claims by the victims, spurring gestures of atonement by the ownership that still left many grudges simmering. The town, as usual, celebrates its Pilgrim heritage with a parade, and many people donning those period costumes, including masks of their first mayor, bearing a fortuitous (for the audience) resemblance to the face covering on the dude from V FOR VENDETTA. Despite the previous disaster, they plan to open on Thanksgiving night again, but with more security in place. Many are displeased. Or worse.

The early social satire about greed, consumerism and Black Friday feeding frenzies soon yields to standard slasher traditions, as a mayorally-masked figure starts killing folks off in a variety of gruesome ways, with the owning family and those young friends primarily targeted. In a mashup of the SCREAM and FINAL DESTINATION franchises, there’s suspense in “who was that masked man?” and delightfully complex and graphic methods for racking up his (or possibly her) body count. The faint of heart should pick another movie.

Roth’s concept unfortunately outpaces its execution. The entire cast consists of all the standard types doing all the standard things in completely unmemorable ways. Some of it seems like an homage; at other times, a grimly amusing genre spoof. Also, most of the proceedings are severely under-lit – presumably to ramp up the foreboding factor, but actually obscuring the action, leaving viewers less sure of who did what to whom in more than a few scenes. Given Roth’s solid horror credentials, including CABIN FEVER and the HOSTEL series, one might reasonably expect a punchier finished product. Despite its shortcomings – including an odd ending – slasher fans will still find about as much carnage as they expected when they bought the tickets. And isn’t that what matters most?

THANKSGIVING opens Friday, Nov 17, in theaters.

RATING: 2 out of 4 stars