Holiday movies are often the best part of the season. When done correctly, they can tap into a number of different powerful emotions or subvert expectations with a fun twist. A Christmas Story is a film that taps into the power of childhood nostalgia. Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas threw us a curveball by combining the magic of Christmas with the horrors of Halloween and succeeds in blurring the boundary of both holidays.
It seems that in the world of holiday films, however, that Thanksgiving is mostly overlooked. It could be due to the distinctly American trappings of the holiday, or perhaps the less interesting imagery and iconography (a pilgrim hat just can’t compare to a Santa Hat or a skull. Plus, y’know, candy and presents). However in 2007 a film would be unleashed upon the world to take a gobble out of holiday cinema: ThanksKilling.
Make no mistake, ThanksKilling is a terrible movie, and intentionally so. If you can endure the runtime with your family, well then there’s something here everybody can be thankful for. Inspired by films like Jack Frost and A Nightmare on Elm Street, two college students got together to make a Thanksgiving horror movie. The concept was simple: What if there was a killer turkey that had the personality of Freddy Kreuger mixed with Eric Cartman and his catchphrase was, “Gobble, gobble, Motherf**cker”?
The film’s greatest strength is that it does not take itself with even a giblet of sincerity, instead opting to immerse you in a gravy of absurdity from the get-go. The opening shot is literally of a topless woman in a pilgrim outfit, which the movie informs us occurs, “just after the first Thanksgiving.” The woman is then murdered by a killer turkey. Normally, a movie would leave some aura of mystery around the killer this early on in a movie. Nope. Not ThanksKilling, the turkey, who is actually named Turkey in the movie, immediately taunts the deceased pilgrim (“Nice t*ts, b*tch!”). We then are taken to a group of college students and subjected to a plot that continually worsens and grows more ridiculous throughout the rest of the runtime.
According to an interview with the film’s creator Jordan Downey from Mandatory.com the film’s cheap budget is touched upon. ThanksKilling was created for $3,500, a budget Downey admitted to as, “Resourceful and insane. That basically sums up everything I’ve done up to this point in my career. All the money went to food, gas, special effects, and props.” It also appears that some of the budget may have gone to the title sequences and a couple of brief animated expository sequences that explain the mythos behind Turkey. There are also a few practical effects that are actually quite good all things considered (a man’s face is removed at one point and looks quite gruesome) but the film always does something to cheapen those moments (the Turkey puts on the severed face and the characters immediately believe he’s that person).
Bad jokes, offensive references, and cheap effects are the hallmarks of ThanksKilling, and this film really isn’t for everyone. However, as many people are going to stay home instead of traveling for the pandemic, this year may be the best to watch ThanksKilling without horrifying your loved ones. It may not be the movie that Thanksgiving needs, but it’s the trash fire of a movie that 2020 deserves. Happy Thanksgiving everybody!
ThanksKilling is now streaming on Amazon Prime and YouTube.
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