The first trailer for Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving is here and while it certainly promises lots of blood and guts for all audiences, it’s also one of the most surprising payoffs to a nearly 20-year-old joke ever.
On the surface, yes. Thanksgiving is a new holiday horror movie from the man who created Cabin Fever and Hostel, scheduled for release on November 17. A spin on classics like Halloween or Black Christmas but using the American holiday of Thanksgiving as the backdrop. It’s such a simple, dumb, fun idea you can’t imagine why it wasn’t done sooner. Only, it was. By Roth. As a joke.
Thanksgiving was originally conceived as a fake trailer to play as part of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s 2007 two-film experience Grindhouse. Roth, along with directors like Rob Zombie and Edgar Wright, created fake trailers to play in between the movies. But that was it. It was fake… until now. Now, 16 years later, audiences will finally see a full version of the fake trailer, Thanksgiving. And here is its very real trailer.
Since it’s such a brief teaser you can’t exactly tell what the story is here. Not that it really matters. Dude dressed as a pilgrim with an axe is plot enough. But Sony, which will release the film, describes it as follows: “After a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy, a mysterious Thanksgiving-inspired killer terrorizes Plymouth, Massachusetts—the birthplace of the infamous holiday.” Director Roth also co-wrote the film with Jeff Rendell. Patrick Dempsey and Addison Rae star along with Milo Manheim, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Nell Verlaque, Rick Hoffman, and Gina Gershon.
How many people who see this movie will know that its DNA comes from so long ago? Will the film have references to its fascinating origins? And will it be a big enough hit to get Thanksgiving 2? We’ll find out on November 17.
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