Eli Roth has achieved the impossible: directing a Thanksgiving horror film that's genuinely good. Originally featured as a short trailer within Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's double-feature horror film Grindhouse, Thanksgiving is now a full feature. What I appreciate most about this film is that it doesn’t feel like a typical 2023 horror; instead, it brought me back to 2005 with its intentionally over-the-top and exaggerated acting. That’s the film's biggest strength; there’s no reason for horror to be profound. Sometimes, it's perfectly fine to just have a good, gory time.

Thanksgiving follows a group of friends who find themselves in the middle of a Black Friday shopping tragedy at a local store called RightMart.

During the Black Friday frenzy, the violence and stampede of shoppers result in multiple deaths. A year later, despite the previous year's horrific events, RightMart is set to run another Black Friday sale. As the one-year anniversary of the tragedy approaches, a killer begins murdering and stalking the friend group, each of whom had some level of involvement in the incident.

Some standout performances in this film include Nell Verlaque, who plays Jessica, Patrick Dempsey, taking on the role of Sheriff Eric Newlon, and Addison Rae, portraying Gabby.

I had a blast with this film. Watching the stampede and the wild crowd gradually becoming more impatient and animalistic in the opening sequence created excellent suspense. I went into the film with no prior knowledge of the plot, totally blind, and my jaw dropped watching all the chaos inside the store. These incidents used to happen all the time in real life on Black Friday - when good sales actually existed. It was really fun to see this reinterpreted in a slasher film in a more gruesome fashion.

This reminded me of some of my favorite, gorier whodunnits, like the Scream series or Bodies Bodies Bodies. I do think that many horror fans will pick up on who the killer is pretty quickly, but that shouldn’t discredit this film too much.

While the acting is a little cheesy and satirical, the film captures all the Thanksgiving themes and tropes—family, food, Black Friday, and, of course, capitalism—all while being pretty funny. For me, this is an instant Thanksgiving classic, and I can see myself rewatching it every November for years to come. I'd love to see a sequel, though I'm unsure if it would be as good as the original.

I just love when a film doesn’t take itself too seriously, and that charm, to me, is Thanksgiving’s biggest strength. I feel like today there is a lot of pressure in the horror filmmaking space to create something that is very artsy and serious; directors like Ari Aster and Jordan Peele come to mind. While their films are great, sometimes I don’t want to think—it’s nice to just watch a film like Thanksgiving let loose and just be a ridiculous slasher.

The performances really drive home a campy charm. Patrick Dempsey did a great job with the character, delivering a very solid performance and creating a believable small-town police officer.

I feel like the horror community either loved or hated how campy this film is. It can be hard to appreciate campy films, but I loved that aspect.

One of the few complaints I have is that the film just starts out so strong, with a great edge-of-your-seat first act, and then I feel like the suspense dropped progressively until the end reveal. I really wish that it maintained that first velocity that the film came out swinging with.

I also think the story could be a little bit better - Thanksgiving is being compared a lot to Scream, and I feel like the story is what gives Scream a major leg up in comparison. Thanksgiving's story is a bit safe and unrememberable.

This was my first time watching an Eli Roth film, and I’m a bit embarrassed that I haven’t seen any of his work yet, though I have always wanted to watch Hostel - I’ll eventually cross that off my list. I can promise that every November for years to come, my partner and I will be watching Thanksgiving; it’s that iconic.

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