Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving Is Now Streaming on HBO Max

Holiday-themed slasher movies are plentiful, but horror filmmakers have largely favored a select few occasions. Christmas and Halloween dominate the subgenre, while Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve claim a modest handful of entries, and Mexican horror regularly highlights Day of the Dead. Thanksgiving, whether American or Canadian, rarely receives the same treatment.

A few horror titles happen to unfold around the holiday, such as Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend, but very few center on the festivities themselves. For decades, the Thanksgiving slasher subgenre essentially consisted of 1981’s Home Sweet Home and 1987’s Blood Rage, memorable for the line “That ain’t cranberry sauce.”

That scarcity inspired the joke behind Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving, which originally appeared as a faux trailer during Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s 2007 double feature Grindhouse. The mock preview embraced absurd slasher tropes, featuring a killer disguised as a Pilgrim, three decapitations, a fatal trampoline stunt, and a grisly family dinner table sequence.

Much like Rodriguez eventually adapted Machete into a feature film, Roth spent 16 years developing Thanksgiving into a full-length movie. Released in 2023, the film showcases Roth’s signature brutality while standing out as a high point in the director’s filmography. The movie arrived on HBO Max on Aug. 17.

The story takes place in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the site of the first Pilgrim colony. A local big-box store hosts a chaotic Black Friday sale that turns deadly after Jessica, played by Addison Rae, lets four friends inside before the doors open. The resulting crowd crush leaves three people dead and nearly costs Jessica’s boyfriend Bobby, played by Jalen Thomas Brooks of The Pitt, his arm.

A year later, a masked figure dressed as a Pilgrim begins hunting down residents tied to the riot. The killer tags Jessica and her social circle in online posts alongside each murder. Jessica, her friends, and the town sheriff, played by Patrick Dempsey, must identify the killer before the entire group is eliminated.

Roth built his reputation on visceral violence. Film critic David Edelstein coined the term “torture porn” while reviewing Roth’s 2006 film Hostel, after briefly considering the label “gorno.” Alongside the Saw franchise, the early Scream films, and Rob Zombie’s Halloween, Hostel helped define the horror landscape of the 2000s.

Roth’s style fits the slasher structure cleanly. Thanksgiving moves quickly, delivers committed performances, stacks up a heavy body count, and features some of the decade’s most elaborate death sequences.

Following the film’s theatrical run, development began on a sequel. According to Roth, production on Thanksgiving 2 slowed down because several cast members booked major commitments following the original film’s release. Scheduling has proven difficult due to Rae’s concert tour and multiple television roles among the ensemble cast.

Thanksgiving remains a distinct, effective slasher that anchors a neglected holiday in the horror genre.

Thanksgiving is streaming on HBO Max.

Source: Polygon