Eli Roth’s latest film “Thanksgiving”, which is currently available on Netflix in South Korea, is cheerfully gory and violent to our horror and amusement. While this is basically another typical slasher horror movie featuring a bunch of cardboard figures to be dispatched in one way or another, it is at least handled well with enough skill and some sense of truly twisted humor, and you may gladly go along with that even though you definitely wince more than once for good reasons.

The movie actually has a rather long history because it is based on Roth’s fictitious trailer of the same name in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s “Grindhouse” (2007). While the two other fictitious trailers in “Grindhouse” were already developed into Rodriguez’s “Machete” (2010) and Jason Eisener’s “Hobo with a Shotgun” (2021), respectively, “Thanksgiving” somehow took some more time for its development, and it turns out to be the best one in the bunch in my inconsequential opinion.

The movie opens with one disastrous Thanksgiving Day evening in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The wealthy owner of a big local superstore decides to start the Black Friday sale a little earlier than expected, so hundreds of local people already gather in front of the superstore even before the planned opening time, and, not so surprisingly, things start to go out of control as the only two security guards are hired to handle this increasingly chaotic circumstance. In the end, mainly thanks to the rather thoughtless behavior of several local high school students including the adolescent daughter of the owner, all hell breaks loose, and the movie surely has some nasty fun with how several people get maimed or killed during the following pandemonium unleashed into the superstore.

The story soon moves forward to one year later. Although many people in the town still remember that horrible day, the owner of the superstore, who has cleaned and then covered up the infamy resulted from his unwise business decision as much as possible during last several months, prepares for the upcoming Black Friday sale as before, and this naturally causes some anger and controversy in the town. 

In case of his daughter and her several friends who were responsible for that horrible day to some degree, this controversy does not interest them that much, but then something strange is sent to them via an online application. It seems that someone is very, very, very angry about what they inadvertently caused on that day, and it soon becomes quite apparent to all of them that they are in a serious danger as this mysterious figure in question kills several other figures associated with the incident.

As the town are swept into panic and terror as a consequence, the local police quickly embark on investigation, but the killer keeps remaining one or two steps ahead of them while often shocking us a lot with a number of very unpleasant killing methods you can expect from your average Eli Roth flick. In case of one victim, the killer sadistically dispatches the target while the target happens to be hopping on a trampoline, and you will probably cringe enough to overlook the implausible aspects of this act of killing.

Needless to say, the killer’s remaining targets are terrified more and more as wondering who is actually the killer, and there are naturally two obvious suspects around the daughter of the owner of the superstore. Is her ex-boyfriend still angry about that serious physical injury of his which happened on that day and consequently ruined his promising athletic career? Is it possible that her current boyfriend is hiding something behind his supposedly (and blandly) likable appearance?

You may have already noticed that I did not mention the names of the main characters at all. To be frank with you, they are pretty forgettable without much life or personality to observe, and they only come to function as possible suspects or targets to be killed or tormented. Although there are several notable performers such as Patrick Dempsey and Gina Gershon, they simply fill their respective roles as required, and Gershon is particularly under-utilized during her very brief appearance.

Nevertheless, if you can go along with what Roth intends to do here, you will be alternatively amused and horrified by how willingly the movie goes way over the top along with the killer. Usually wearing the mask of a certain historical figure associated with Thanksgiving Day, the killer continues to go for more gruesome killings to behold, I must confess that I could not help but get tickled when the killer later prepares for the grand finale with something not so far from that shocking finale of Peter Greenaway’s “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover” (1989).

In conclusion, “Thanksgiving” is a fairly effective genre piece which will certainly delight its target audiences. Yes, it is rather flat and predictable in terms of story and characters (I could easily guess the identity of the killer in advance, for example), but the movie is still a competent product to be enjoyed during the last weeks of cold November, and you may appreciate that even if you are not a fan of Roth’s previous works including “Hostel” (2005). To be frank with you, I considered giving it 2.5 stars at first, but I eventually decided to be a bit more generous this time, so I mildly recommend it with some caution.