I’m on a hunt for the scariest movies of all time! I’ll be looking at films of any era, from any country, and then reviewing them based solely on how terrifying they are.

If you have a suggestion for a horror movie, please let me know on Twitter.

Please be advised, spoilers may lie ahead!!

Thanksgiving (2023)

Director: Eli Roth

Starring: Nell Verlaque, Patrick Dempsey

In a market as oversaturated as slasher films, there are trends that come and go as readily as the hapless victims on the screen. In the modern era, it’s considered particularly attractive to be self-aware and shamelessly gratuitous. These adjectives basically summate Thanksgiving — from the equally as self-aware and shamelessly gratuitous Eli Roth — a purposefully cheesy showcase of blood and entrails.

It’s a lot of heckin’ good fun, if you’re into this sort of thing. But does it qualify as a horror movie, capable of registering spooks and spoof in equal measure? The short answer is no. The long answer is also no, but with more words, and that’s the version you’re about to receive.

Set in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Thanksgiving opens on one tragic evening for the titular holiday. Motivated by low, low prices, a mob of bloodthirsty shoppers bust down the front doors of the local department store, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. There’s broken bones, slit throats, and even a bonus scalping for good measure.

Happy Thanksgiving!

One year later, a masked assailant bearing a resemblance to John Carver begins to terrorise Plymouth, targeting all of the people involved in this melee. A group of friends who were there that night (and ultimately the dickheads who made it happen with their antics) try to work out the killer’s identity before he can pick them off next.

Within the first few minutes of set-up, you get an impression of what kind of movie this is. It liberally applies gross-out gore, the graphical detail of which will likely make you wince. There is no subtlety or nuance, but no attempts at it either; it very well knows what it’s doing, and it’s pure visceral bliss for the sickos out there.

My first issue in trying to engage with it beyond that, is the fact that basically everyone in this film is an insufferable asshole. The lead, who is the department store owner’s daughter (Verlaque), isn’t really given a personality of her own, so she is guilty by association with her meathead friends.

I know, we’re not supposed to cheer for the good guys. But if you want me to become invested, surely you have to make me care just a little? For the first half of its runtime, Thanksgiving is a chopping gallery of indiscernible personalities, where the victims’ fates are never in question and you’re just left wondering how horribly they’re going to die.

There is a building suspense in the whodunnit aspect, and the tension rises liberally in the final act, where the characters of import are the only ones left standing. With that being said, there’s only a single particularly good hide-and-seek segment, notably outnumbered by the amount of gratuitous feet closeups as if Tarantino made some last-minute contributions.

The resultant product eschews fear for pure carnal gratification, but it’s a deliberate choice. You’re more likely to guffaw at its depravity than feel remorse for anyone involved. As I said above — and indeed, as I have echoed in my summaries for Saw X and The Housemaid — if you don’t care about the people, you won’t share in their motivations to survive.

So there’s your long answer. Thanksgiving is yucky and silly, but not even remotely scary. It comes as recommended if you’re up for a bloodbath, but once again I would just as readily strip the ‘horror’ delineation from its classification. Scream, this is not.

Final Verdict

Another dud for The All-Time Scariest, which is fast becoming the All-Time Unscariest as a result of my dubious selections. In defence of Thanksgiving, this was not its motive to begin with, and as a low-stakes slasher with a decent whodunnit mystery, it’s perfectly serviceable. I picked the killer, incidentally, but I second-guessed myself a few times before the payoff.

What are you thankful for this season? Me personally, I’m just glad this wasn’t that shitshow Children of the Corn. What a fucking disgrace that was.