Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is exactly what it needs to be. That's not as easy as it sounds.

The premise: a Black Friday riot at a Plymouth, Massachusetts big-box store ends in several deaths, including a woman who gets crushed in a stampede. One year later, a killer in a Pilgrim costume starts working through the people responsible for the riot. He posts on Instagram. He has plans for a Thanksgiving dinner. It gets messy.

Eli Roth has been trying to turn his 2007 fake Grindhouse trailer into a feature since... 2007. The result is a film that knows exactly what it is and delivers it without apology. The kills are inventive. The pacing is tight. The ensemble is likeable enough that you feel something when they start disappearing. Patrick Dempsey shows up as the town sheriff and plays it completely straight, which is the right call.

Thanksgiving doesn't waste your time explaining itself. The setup is clear, the rules are clear, the mythology is clear. Someone did something bad, and now someone dressed as a Pilgrim is going to make them pay for it. The slasher genre's core moral framework, bad behavior gets you killed, is present and functional throughout.

Addison Rae handles her role better than her pop-star background might suggest. She's not the final girl, which is a decent misdirection. Nell Verlaque is the one who carries the film's emotional throughline, and she does it competently.

The Black Friday setup is the film's most interesting element ideologically. The riot that starts everything is genuinely disturbing, and the film makes sure you understand that the people in the riot are doing something wrong. Consumerism run amok has consequences. That's a critique, but it's not a progressive one. It's the kind of thing your grandfather might say about Black Friday. The film doesn't feel like a lecture.

The corrupt-sheriff twist in the third act is the weakest element. It's well-executed but slightly familiar, and it requires Dempsey's warm screen presence to sustain a sudden pivot to villainy that the film hasn't quite earned. It lands, but it's the one moment where you can see the machinery working.

Overall: Thanksgiving is a solidly crafted, genuinely fun slasher with one of 2023's better genre premises. It's not political. It's not trying to teach you anything. It wants to make you jump and then feel vaguely guilty about the jump. Mission accomplished.

Formula: Weighted Score = Severity × Authenticity Multiplier × Centrality Multiplier

🔴 Woke Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Anti-Consumerism / Black Friday Critique	3	0.7	1.8	3.78
Corrupt Law Enforcement Villain	3	1	1	3
Final Girl Protagonist	2	0.7	1	1.4
Pilgrim Iconography Used for Horror	2	1	0.5	1
TOTAL WOKE				9.2

🟢 Traditional Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Traditional Slasher Moral Framework: Evil Punished	3	0.7	1.8	3.78
Community Responds to Shared Threat	3	0.7	1	2.1
Wrongdoers Punished / Justice Served	4	0.7	1	2.8
TOTAL TRADITIONAL				8.7

Score Margin: 0 NEUTRAL