Thanksgiving is a gore-filled slasher full of turkey and murder

There aren’t enough horror movies about Thanksgiving. Sure, there’s ThanksKilling — the movie about the killer turkey — but that’s just not enough when Christmas has so many. Thankfully, Eli Roth is here with Thanksgiving, a slasher that’s technically been 16 years in the making.

The movie centers on a small Massachusetts town that’s being terrorized by a Thanksgiving-themed serial killer in a mask and colonial-era hat. Of course, the killer also seems to be setting his victims up for some kind of elaborate Thanksgiving-day reveal.

Thanksgiving started its life as a gag in the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez double-feature Grindhouse, which was made up of Tarantino’s Death Proof and Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. Between those two feature presentations, Grindhouse included a variety of trailers for then-fake movies. But since then, many of those movies have actually been made, including Machete, Hobo with a Shotgun, and now Thanksgiving — just Rob Zombie’s Werewolf Women of the SS, and Edgar Wright’s Don’t haven’t been turned into features yet.

While Thanksgiving’s origins are surprising, its cast is also a bit unexpected. The movie stars TikTok celebrity Addison Rae, with Grey’s Anatomy’s Patrick Dempsey as the town’s sheriff. Eli Roth (Hostel) wrote and directed Thanksgiving, choosing to abandon his long-stalled Borderlands movie in favor of this camp-filled slasher.

Thanksgiving will arrive in theaters on Nov. 17.

There aren’t enough horror movies about Thanksgiving. Sure, there’s ThanksKilling — the movie about the killer turkey — but that’s just not enough when Christmas has so many. Thankfully, Eli Roth is here with Thanksgiving, a slasher that’s technically been 16 years in the making.

The movie centers on a small Massachusetts town that’s being terrorized by a Thanksgiving-themed serial killer in a mask and colonial-era hat. Of course, the killer also seems to be setting his victims up for some kind of elaborate Thanksgiving-day reveal.

Thanksgiving started its life as a gag in the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez double-feature Grindhouse, which was made up of Tarantino’s Death Proof and Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. Between those two feature presentations, Grindhouse included a variety of trailers for then-fake movies. But since then, many of those movies have actually been made, including Machete, Hobo with a Shotgun, and now Thanksgiving — just Rob Zombie’s Werewolf Women of the SS, and Edgar Wright’s Don’t haven’t been turned into features yet.

While Thanksgiving’s origins are surprising, its cast is also a bit unexpected. The movie stars TikTok celebrity Addison Rae, with Grey’s Anatomy’s Patrick Dempsey as the town’s sheriff. Eli Roth (Hostel) wrote and directed Thanksgiving, choosing to abandon his long-stalled Borderlands movie in favor of this camp-filled slasher.

Thanksgiving will arrive in theaters on Nov. 17.