Thanksgiving
TriStar Pictures (2023)
The story of how this movie came into existence started over 16 years ago when directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino collaborated to create a theatrical double feature that was collectively known as Grindhouse. The first half of the double feature was an action/horror flick called Planet Terror and the second half was a road thriller called Death Proof. The idea behind Grindhouse was to recreate the feeling of seeing a double feature at a small indy theater in the 70's that specializes in exploitation films that most major theater chains wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. The films were given an aged and scuffed up look, and reels were deliberately missing from the final theatrical version of the movie to recreate the 70's grindhouse theater experience.
Another thing that was added to the theatrical experience of Grindhouse was trailers for movies that didn't exist...at least they didn't exist back then. In the years that followed, many of these fake trailers have been turned into full-length feature films, including Machete and Hobo With A Shotgun. The fake trailer that Eli Roth contributed to Grindhouse is the latest of these to become a real movie: Thanksgiving.
There isn't nearly as much entertainment that are based on the Thanksgiving holiday as there are for Halloween and Christmas, but there are a few that I make it a point to watch every year. These include movies like Planes, Trains & Automobiles and Son In Law, and cartoons like A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, Bugs Bunny's Thanksgiving Diet, and The Simpsons episode Bart vs. Thanksgiving. Eli Roth's Thanksgiving is definitely going to be added to this list of annual traditions for me.
Thanksgiving feels like the 80's slasher flicks that I loved to rent on the weekends and stay up all night to watch. The gore is so over the top that I couldn't help but to laugh at some of the kill scenes. Thankfully, there were plenty of other folks in the theater who were laughing just as hard as I was, so I didn't feel quite as much like a weirdo with a twisted sense of humor as I did when I would watch these alone in my bedroom. If you love horror movies, this is a movie that you absolutely cannot miss.
