4K ULTRA HD REVIEW / HDR SCREENSHOTS
The pitchfork from the masked killer aims at Katherine Wright (Karen Cliche). The annual Plymouth, Massachusetts Thanksgiving Parade heads down Main Street.
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“THANKSGIVING”
4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray; 2023; R for strong bloody horror violence, pervasive profanity, and some sexual material; Digital copy via Amazon Video (4K), Apple TV (4K), Fandango Home (4K), Movies Anywhere (4K), YouTube (4K)
Best extra: Commentary by producer/co-writer/director Eli Roth and co-writer/producer Jeff Rendell
FOR YEARS, lifelong friends Eli Roth (“Hostel”) and Jeff Rendell mused about a way to cinematically honor that iconic, traditional American holiday, Thanksgiving. And, thanks to them, just as with Halloween, Christmas and Mother’s Day, the annual autumn gathering for family, friends, and feasting has its very own slasher film.
The plot begins in Plymouth, Mass., where Thomas Wright (Rick Hoffman), owner of a Walmart-style department store called Right Mart, is enjoying Thanksgiving dinner with his family. The next day is Black Friday and, with the lure of giveaways and low prices, Right Mart opens its doors. Immediately, a violent riot explodes, and shoppers, crazed with consumer greed, trample each other to get to the products they want.
In the violent chaos, many are horribly maimed and even killed, including Amanda Collins (Gina Gershon), the wife of Right Mart’s manager (Ty Olsson). A year goes by, and Thanksgiving season rolls around again in Plymouth, with all its concomitant festivities. But amid the celebration, someone costumed and masked as the town’s founder, John Carver (unintended pun), is systematically slaughtering selected Plymouth residents – from a diner waitress to a group of high school friends.
(1) A group of high school buddies are on their way to Right Mart's big sale on Black Friday. (2) The restless horde gathers in the early hours, hungry for bargains and giveaways. (3) Mitch Collins (Ty Olsson), Right Mart's manager, waits for the right time to open the doors. (4) The impatient people are becoming increasingly frantic to get into the store. (5) Mayhem ensues, and Sheriff Newlon is horrified by what he's witnessing. (6) Mitch discovers that his wife (Gina Gershon) has been killed in the riot.
Sheriff Newlon (Patrick Dempsey) investigates, while the frightened residents of Plymouth wait to see who will be the next victim. And the mutilated corpses keep piling up, leading to a climactic scene of a hideously perverse Thanksgiving dinner, guaranteed to make viewers lose their appetites, to say the very least.
“Thanksgiving” is a slickly-made and well-acted, albeit standard, slasher movie, offering a wide variety of occasionally comical, outrageously graphic, and often culinary-themed killings, bound to delight aficionados of the genre. The cast includes Nell Verlaque, Milo Manheim, Addison Rae, Tomaso Sanelli, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Karen Cliche, Jenna Warren, Gabriel Davenport, Jenna Warren, Jeff Teravainen, and Gabriel Davenport.
VIDEO
Sony’s Blu-ray was originally released in early 2024, and since the digital footage was captured and mastered in 4K (2.39:1 aspect ratio) it already had a first-rate visual look. But, the new 4K disc, which includes Dolby Vision and HDR10 grading, takes this slasher to new heights. It delivers added resolution with finer detail and clarity with the numerous wide-angle shots, improved color spectrum with natural facial toning, more controlled highlights, and overall, it's toned with a darker palette. All of the upgrades fit the mood perfectly.
Everything was nicely encoded onto a 100 GB disc to provide super high bit rates. HDR10 peak brightness hits 1236 nits and averages 315.
AUDIO
The Dolby Atmos soundtrack has plenty of ‘gotcha’ effects moments as the sound envelopes home theaters from front to back, the sides and height speakers. Music from composer Brandon Roberts has plenty of cliché symphonic cues and excellent bass response.
(1) Lizzie (Amanda Barker), a diner waitress, is the masked killer's first victim. (2) He's disguised in a John Carver costume. (3) The high school friends discuss Lizzie's gruesome murder. (4&5) Sheriff Newlon and policemen watch the diner's security camera footage and see the masked murderer.
EXTRAS
There’s a hefty portion of bonus features on the carryover Blu-ray, plus the 4K includes nearly 40 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage captured on low-grade 1990s video cameras by the youthful cast. It’s a watch for true fans at best.
The Blu-ray includes deleted and extended scenes; outtakes; a reel of Eli & Jeff’s youthful collaborative films; and a couple of brief featurettes on the making of “Thanksgiving.” The commentary is fun and informative, even though listeners may get the feeling that Roth and Rendell haven’t quite outgrown their adolescence. The two have been buds since kindergarten in Newton, Mass. Says Rendell, “We dreamed of a Thanksgiving movie since the age of 12,” noting that it’s not surprising, seeing as they “grew up in the birthplace of Thanksgiving.” Roth mentions the large number of Pilgrim-era recreations in Massachusetts, such as Old Sturbridge Village. The film, however, was shot in Canada during an especially frigid cold spell, which often tested the actors’ and production team’s endurance. Snow had to be cleared off the streets for some of the scenes.
During his discussion of the casting, Roth says he loved all the actors, so “I was sorry we killed so many off.” Gershon had never appeared in a horror movie before, and when Roth was pitching it to her, he promised, “I’ll give you a beautiful death!” For the riot scene, Roth chuckles while discussing how hard it was to get the Canadian extras to act as aggressively as was needed – “they’re so polite!” As a way to explain Roth and Rendell’s penchant for screen violence, Roth jokes about how, when they were growing up, they were into “WWF wrestling, heavy metal and hockey … No wonder we didn’t get dates until we were 40!”
Roth says there came a point in the planning of “Thanksgiving” when he and Rendell realized they “had to pick a lane”: Were they making a teen comedy? A slasher movie? A police procedural? Clearly, they chose to go down the slasher road: “We played by the rules of slasher films,” he explains, “and then played with them.” He credits “Mute Witness,” about a movie makeup artist hunted by a murderer in an empty studio, as an influence on “Thanksgiving.” “Building a sense of dread is one of my favorite things to do in a film.”
(1&2) Jessica Wright (Nell Verlaque) is interviewed by Sheriff Newlon. (3) A scene from the climactic Thanksgiving dinner appears on social media. (4) Right Mart's owner, Thomas Wright (Rick Hoffman), and his wife Kathleen (Karen Cliche) ride in the store's float at the Thanksgiving Day parade. (5) Violence erupts at the parade, set off by a killer clown. (6) Plymouth residents react to the atrocities taking place at the parade.
Roth talks about a scene in “Thanksgiving” in which the villain murders a guy who has a pet cat. Roth says he “always worries about pets in movies,” like who’s going to feed them if their owner is murdered. So, in the scene, after viciously doing away with its owner, the killer thoughtfully fills the cat’s bowl and gently pats its head before leaving.
Some of the location scenes were shot in a Toronto landmark, the oldest house in the city. Others were set in a “Pioneer Village” in Hamilton, Canada. Rendell explains that John Carver was an actual historical figure who had lived in New Plymouth Colony. For the filming, he adds, several different actors dressed as the Carver masked killer, to make it more difficult for viewers to guess his identity. Rendell relays how delighted he and Roth were when they discovered that the Canadian high school, in which some of the chase scenes were shot, had a cosmetology department. The room came equipped with scores of plastic heads and mirrors everywhere, which turned out to be the ideal place to shoot a scene in which a terrified Jessica (Verlaque) is trying to hide from the killer.
In the film’s “centerpiece scene,” so to speak, the villain roasts Kathleen Wright (Cliche) like a turkey. A real sous chef prepped the actress beforehand, carefully brushing her face and legs with olive oil, sprinkling salt and pepper over her, and placing sprigs of parsley between her toes. Rendell gleefully points out that the brand on the giant oven, where the poor woman is to meet her fate, reads “Rendell.” Dinner is served.
— Peggy Earle
(1) The killer closes in on Kathleen. (2) Thomas is about to meet his bloody fate.
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