Thanksgiving - A Pretty Entertaining Slasher Movie with Good Background Story

There were few new movies released in Indonesian theaters yesterday which interest me. However, only one that played in the cinema nearest to our home. So if felt like this film was chosen for us to see first. Anyway my wife who is not a fan of horror movies was still OK with this one as it was a slasher genre. All right, I'll get on it then.

Brief Story Line

One year after a fatal incident at Rightmart Superstore on Thanksgiving night, people were not comfortable with the idea of having same Huge Sale event. However the owner Thomas Wright (Rick Hoffman - Suits TV series etc) was adamant that it should continue as they have taken more precautions with the support from the Sheriff (Patrick Dempsey - Enchanted, Grey's Anatomy TV series etc) and his deputies.

Before it even began, a mysterious person started to kill people who were in the store during the previous year's incident. Rick's daughter Jessica (Nell Verlaque - Big Shot TV series etc) and her best friends Gabby (Addison Rae - He's All That etc), Evan (Tomaso Sanelli), Yulia (Jenna Warren) and Scuba (Gabriel Davenport) were getting weird messages that seemed to relate to the murder. It also involved Ryan (Milo Manheim) and Bobby (Jalen Thomas Brooks - Walker TV series etc) who were there during the incident.

So who was the killer and what was his reason for killing the people? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

This movie started off with some background story of the Thanksgiving event that was filled with horrific images and caught us by surprise. As the story continued, I realized that it was not a conventional slasher film where it only had senseless killing spree but it had a deeper story and provided some perspective. However it became more thrilling when the killing spree started. As usual for slasher genre, it would have plenty of jump scare scenes that had great effect to audience, particularly my wife who complained every time a killing was about to happen.

What made me and my wife like slasher films in general were the mystery of the killer and the fun of trying to find out who the culprit was (this time both of us were able to guess correctly), plus obviously the suspense of seeing people trying to evade the murderer and the over-the-top gruesome kills. This movie had all those elements but there were two times the Indonesian censorship body had cut the scenes that they deemed too violent. It was surprising to me since there were other films that also had extremely violent scenes but was not censored. The special effects were actually pretty good with one scene in particular on the table set up by the killer that my wife was in awe.

The film was directed by Eli Roth who was famous for directing Cabin Fever and Hostel. So he certainly had the credential to do this sort of movie. After further reading, I noticed that it was based on a fictitious trailer that was shown in the 2007 Grindhouse, a double feature movies of Planet Terror written & directed by Robert Rodriguez and Death Proof by Quentin Tarantino. This would explain the two names mentioned in the closing credits. Btw there was a brief post end credit scene in case you are interested, though it did not have any relevancy to the story.

The characters here were pretty standard with high school students that consisted of the regular jocks and their girlfriends, the police represented by Sheriff and some adults. In addition to the names I mentioned above, there were also the appearance of Gina Gershon (Bound, Blockers etc) as Amanda Collins, Ty Ollson as her husband Mitch, Karen Cliche (Mutant X TV series etc) as Thomas' wife Kathleen and few others. In general they did their job adequately but no one really stood out for me. Anyway that's not the point cause we do not expect award worthy film anyway. Oh critics seemed to enjoy this one as could be seen on the high rating while audience were so so cause the box office performance was not exactly spectacular.

Overall this was a quite entertaining slasher film that had the usual elements. It had a duration of 106 minutes which sufficiently covered the background story and the killing scenes. With decent special effects and effective use of jump scare scenes supported by good sound effect, made it fun to see. Other than the disappointing censors on two scenes, I thought the movie was still enjoyable and the ending was a bit unconventional for slasher movie. So if you are fans of this genre, I think you would like this one.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars