Seeing as though the American season of Thanksgiving has come and gone, what more fitting way to celebrate it than with an Eli Roth horror/slasher movie that is destined to put us off of our annual turkey dinner?
If you head into the movie theater with intentions of seeing a movie that actually does celenbrate the annual tradition of Thanksgiving, maybe you made a mistake. Whereas if you entered with intentions of seeing blood, guts, gore and human torture, you came to the right place.
One thing I will say is that Eli Roth certainly doesn't hold back in some scenes for this movie. In the sense that, if you have ever wondered what a persons face would actually look like if a pole was thrusted through it, you're about to find out.
Small disclaimer, this movie is not for the faint-hearted and easily disgusted. If the sudden jump scares and intense storyline don't frighten you, the amount of blood and guts spilled on the camera lens of this film is going to do the job.
The main selling point for Thanksgiving is it's fairly impressive storlyine. Nowadays we see too many generic horror/slasher movies that tend to follow the same trends and predictable storyline. Ever since the integration of 'Halloween' and the world of Michael Myers back in 1978, it has been difficult to create a movie of similar sense that doesn't seme generic.
But I have to hand it to the creative minds of this movie as they do a pretty brilliant job of making this movie feel it's own and make it difficult to compare it with generic slasher movies from the 70's/80's.
And although the recent rise of arthouse and psychological horrors has caused them to quickly creep into the frame and essentially make the genre it's own, 'Thanksgiving' is living proof that a good old slasher is still as effective as they were back when it was popular.
Of course, Eli Roth makes it clear that he had intentions of keeping the movie relevant to the 'Gen Z' era as it seems that young adults is the primary target audience for this film. And although this may be off-putting and cringeworthy for members of the audience that can't relate to some of the content on screen, for me it was sufferable and didn't really take much effect on the film.
It's essentially the same old trick of assuming that if someone's going to die, it may as well be repulsive young adults that you wouldn't mind seeing with a knife through their head.
Another impressive factor regarding the storyline was the number of surprising twists scattered throughout the unpredictable plot of this film. Just when you think you know who the killer is it turns out to be someone else, and when you become comfortable with the idea that it's them, it ends up being someone you wouldn't have predicted in a million years.
Although 'Thanksgiving' certainly isn't for everyone (certainly the faint-hearted) it is a movie that essentially revisits the world of slasher horrors and reclaims it's relevancy in a time where that doesn't quite seem the case anymore.
Overall Rating: 7/10
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