If you know Eli Roth’s filmography (he directed Cabin Fever, Hostel, The Green Inferno), you know what to expect from Thanksgiving, the start of a bloody, somewhat disgusting, slasher film franchise set in Plymouth, Massachusetts — the birthplace of the American Thanksgiving feasts. In it, a man with John Carver’s mask (Carver founded Plymouth) starts a killing spree one year after a Black Friday sale that leaves dead bodies in its wake.

I kid you not — that is the premise … and it works.

About as good as any other slasher franchise worth remembering, Roth’s film, written by Jeff Rendell, started out as a fake trailer that was shown in the Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez-directed Grindhouse (2007). The film took its time, but the update into long-form is worth the wait.

The routine cliche one expects from films of this genre is there: Jessica (Nell Verlaque), a high-school going, good-looking young girl with a baseball pitcher boyfriend (Jalen Thomas Brooks), their two varsity jock friends and their girlfriends (Tomaso Sanelli, Addison Rae, Gabriel Davenport, Jenna Warren), slip into her father’s mega-mart on the eve of Thanksgiving Black Friday sales.

The crowd, seeing the youngsters inside, go berserk, break into the mart, and bloody pandemonium ensues. Jessica’s new mother (Karen Cliche), whom she doesn’t get along with, tells the authorities that the video recording is missing — a year later, however, the killings start.

Thanksgiving certainly took its time to be made, but the update into long-form is worth the wait

Roth’s film is a mix of tried and tested gimmicks and a few new-age additions. The Thanksgiving killer uses social media to flaunt his gory killings, and the local authorities, led by Sheriff Newlon (Patrick Dempsey) — whose wife (Gina Gerson), by the way was also a victim of the massacre — runs around, mostly clueless.

As I wrote, there is nothing groundbreaking here storywise, but the routineness, the moderately fast pace and the quality of production — better than most OTT originals — brings a refreshing whiff of late ‘90s nostalgia, where teen slasher movies such as I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legends and Final Destination made sure that Hollywood stayed afloat at a time when studios shied away from big-budget movies.

If Roth and Rendell are on board, one wouldn’t mind a sequel.

Released by Sony Pictures, Thanksgiving is rightfully rated A by Pakistani censors, and has scenes of blood, gore, decapitation and humans flailing about in giant ovens. The film is playing in cinemas

Published in Dawn, ICON, December 10th, 2023