After Christmas, it’s probably the American holiday that most stresses people out. Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November each year and it’s the time when families gather together around the dinner table and listen to Grampa rage against the latest talking point in the culture wars that has the presenters and pundits on Fox News all up in arms. Then there’s sister Melody, the vegan, gluten-free eco-terrorist who is hell-bent on making sure everyone feels guilty about eating turkey with stuffing, and there’s brother David, who can’t hold back his tears as he tells us for the umpteenth time that he invested all his savings in FTX only to see it disappear when Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested for fraud. The list of crazies at the table goes on.* Why do people put themselves through such torture every year?

In recent years, Thanksgiving has also marked the start of the Christmas shopping season with Black Friday often beginning on Thursday night. For many people, the lure of scoring a large-screen television at a heavy discount has been quite powerful and many stores have seen huge, and often unruly, crowds queue up outside their stores for hours waiting for the doors to open. It’s that scenario that forms the basis for THANKSGIVING, the new holiday-themed slasher film from multi-hyphenate Eli Roth (THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS; INGLORIOUS BASTERDS).

Set in Plymouth, Massachusetts (a place I have visited and I have to say that the rock is much smaller in real life than I imagined it would be), the Thursday night Black Friday sale at RightMart ends in tragedy almost as soon as it begins. Now, one year later, store owner Thomas Wright (Rick Hoffman, TV’s SUITS) decides to hold another Black Friday sale against the wishes of his teenage daughter, Jessica (Nell Verlaque, TV’s BIG SHOT), and many others in the community who aren’t yet ready to move on. When one of the prime instigators of the tragedy is found dead in front of Thomas’ store just days before Thanksgiving, Thomas decides to press on with the sale even while Jessica and her high school friends are starting to receive disturbing images on their phones from someone who is dressed up as the aptly-named pilgrim, John Carver. Sheriff Newlon (Patrick Dempsey, BRIDGET JONES’S BABY; TV’s GREY’S ANATOMY and People magazine’s newly-minted “Sexiest Man Alive”) and his team are hard on the case and he’s hoping that Jessica can help them identify who the killer is before anyone else gets served up on a plate.

I think we can all agree that Eli Roth knows a thing or two about making blood-soaked films and I can happily report that he doesn’t disappoint fans of the genre here. THANKSGIVING has the best cold open I’ve seen in any film since INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. Roth has clearly learned a few lessons from his long-time association with Quentin Tarantino. The detailed choreography that must have gone into creating that scene is truly impressive and Roth and his dp, Milan Chadima (EXTRACTION 2), capture the mayhem in all its gore-filled glory.

It was clear in my screening here in Hong Kong that the film’s humour failed to land with the local audience as my Western colleagues and I were the only ones laughing not just at the creativity of each kill but with the subtle jabs (no pun intended) Roth and his co-writer Jeff Rendell take at Gen Zs and their love of social media. One of my Hong Kong colleagues, who has been thoroughly indoctrinated in Westerners’ quirks over the years due to his friendship with us, said that the locals don’t understand the holiday because only American expats celebrate it here, and instead of Black Friday, there is Singles’ Day, which takes place each year on November 11th. It will be interesting to see how well the film performs here where the vast majority of local and regional horror films involve ghosts.

One of the enjoyable things about slasher films is trying to work out the killer’s identity. Roth and Rendell keep audiences guessing almost to the end by creating a number of characters who have both ample motivation and opportunity, and just when you think you’ve figured out who the killer is, another character does something shady. Also to their credit, they keep all the characters real without making them do dumb things that characters in far too many horror films often do. So no one enters a pitch black room without turning on a light first. THANKSGIVING is a smartly written, well-crafted film, and one that moviegoers will find to be a deliciously rewarding holiday treat.

THANKSGIVING opens in Hong Kong tomorrow (November 16th) and around the world the day after. Who knew that revenge is a dish best served with cranberry sauce on the side?

*I’m happy to report that the above-mentioned people are all fictional, at least they are as far as my family is concerned.

Thanks for reading but don’t be a lurker! If you liked what you just read, here are some suggestions:

Sign up to receive my movie reviews in your inbox automatically
Share this review on your Facebook page
Leave me a message telling me what you thought of my review or the film
Bookmark the site and visit often
Like my Howard For Film Facebook page
Watch my reviews on my YouTube page
Check out my Howard For Film magazine on Flipboard
Tell your friends about the site