Eli Roth's Thanksgiving Trailer Finally Gives Turkey Day A Slasher To Call Its Own
Eli Roth's "Thanksgiving" has had one of the strangest trajectories in recent movie history. What began as a fake trailer crafted for 2007's experimental double feature "Grindhouse" is now a very real movie. One with a cast and release date and new trailer and everything! That means that the core joke of that initial fake trailer — that it felt like a truly real forgotten holiday-themed slasher movie from decades past that somehow escaped our collective memories — now has to stand up to a bit more scrutiny. When you remove the joke element from "Thanksgiving," will folks still care?
The new red band trailer for "Thanksgiving" is here to help us answer that question. While the footage here doesn't look like the gonzo '80s throwback we saw in the fake trailer 16 years ago, it does look like a thoroughly modern slasher with one toe or two comfortably planted in the past. And for some horror fans, that may be just what they need from this movie.
Watch the red band trailer for Thanksgiving
While the general horror fan opinion has waxed and waned on Eli Roth over the years, this material finds him firmly back in his element. Of course the filmmaker behind "Hostel" would feel right at home making a gory, sleazy slasher tale where a masked killer hacks his way through unsuspecting victims. He may have stepped away from the horror genre to make the video game adaptation "Borderlands" (a film that remains unreleased for, uh, reasons), but Roth was always going to return to movies like this. One gets the impression he can't fully escape, nor does he want to.
And while "Thanksgiving" is conceptually in debt to films like "Halloween" and "New Year's Evil," slashers that transform a widely celebrated holiday into a day of terror, it's also that rare thing you see in a wide release movie these days: a wholly original concept. Sure, it's technically based on that original fake trailer, but there's no actual history here. No expectations. No information to prepare us for what to expect for these characters and the killer. This is a wholly original slasher film, and an attempt to kickstart something new. And you've got to respect that.
"Thanksgiving" will carve its way into theaters on November 17, 2023.