Last week we showcased my horror and philosophy students' films in Horrific Thoughts: Post-Halloween Philosophical Horror Film Fest! (You can see a recording of the full event here, or just watch most of the films here).
Why was it not a Halloween film fest? In previous pre-COVID years, it was. But I figured that life is horrific enough right now, and I gave my students a few more weeks to complete their films. And they did a great job making some fun films during a pandemic (they will be writing philosophical reflections on their films as explained here).
Toward the end of the event, I noted that Thanksgiving is coming up here in the US and mentioned that there are Thanksgiving horror films. And one of the jurors for the film fest, Chris Dortch (who runs the excellent Chattanooga Film Festival), mentioned Blood Rage. I watched Pilgrim last year. After looking into it, I also found The Oath and Thankskilling.
So, I guess I have enough for a short list of Thanksgiving horror films to watch at home instead of spreading the Coronavirus to your family this year! Seriously, don't give your family COVID-19. Small indoor gatherings with people outside your immediate household are a major spreader of the virus. Stay home. Be safe. And hopefully your family will all still be here to celebrate next Thanksgiving. Stay home and watch these movies instead!
This classic 80's slasher is set during Thanksgiving weekend, which makes it a classic in the small subgenre of Thanksgiving horror. Two young brothers, Todd and Terry, accompany their parents to a drive-in movie, where one of the brothers murders two teenagers just trying to have some innocent sexy time (feeding into the horror trope that premarital sex must be punished, of course).
Fast forward a decade or so to Thanksgiving when the brother who didn't murder anyone is home from college. The murderous brother has been in an asylum this whole time, but during Thanksgiving dinner their mom gets a call that her murderous son has escaped!
Plenty of slashing and murder and rudely interrupted sexy times ensue. And there's a twist that you might see coming from across the Jacksonville apartment complex (I did), but it's fun, anyway. This isn't even the A-list of 80's slashers (the acting and effects are often amusingly bad), but if you like a heaping side dish of 80's cheese with your Thanksgiving, I recommend it.
I noticed Pilgrim on Hulu last year as part of their Into the Dark film series (which also includes the lovably surreal film Pooka!). I probably watched Pilgrim for the novelty of a Thanksgiving horror film, but it was enjoyable enough.
Wanting to make Thanksgiving more memorable, a family invites actors portraying 17th century English Pilgrims to visit during the holiday. But then the actors are a little too into their roles and bring all the horrors of the 17th century into the 21st. Yikes! You've probably had unwelcome guests before, but these are some especially puritanical baddies. Not a bad thing to watch to cure yourself of feeling bad about not having house guests this Thanksgiving!
This 2018 Ike Barinholtz vehicle with an ensemble including Tiffany Haddish, Nora Dunn, Carrie Brownstein, and John Cho is definitely the biggest budget film on my list.
In a disturbingly plausible alternate reality, Americans are encouraged to sign an oath to the President and government (and vaguely threatened about what happens if they fail to do so). Aside from tearing the country apart, this threatens to tear apart Thanksgiving for Chris and Kai's family, especially since Chris's brother and his girlfriend are staunch supporters of the oath while Chris spends most of his free time ranting against it as the downfall of American ideals.
If my little description doesn't make it obvious, the movie itself will make it obvious in about two minutes: this is a very thinly veiled treatment of life in Trump's America. At times it's so thinly veiled that it's hard to watch, especially as I write this in late 2020 and the Trump administration is on the way out in less than two months. Still, the deeper dysfunctions of America are still here, and will be for some time.
Anyway, in The Oath, tempers rise as family members vehemently disagree about how to handle life in this version of America and shit hits the fan when two mysterious agents show up demanding to know why Chris didn't sign the oath by the Thanksgiving deadline.
The movie does a great job raising issues of how to best live one's political ideals and resist tyranny while also protecting one's family and living with those who disagree. But in doing so it does hit a little closer to home than might be comfortable right now, living through these issues in real life. I think it's vitally important to consider these issues, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't squirming uncomfortably through a lot of the movie.
Thankskilling is a bad movie that knows it's bad and stuffs the viewer with that badness and cooks you at 350 degrees. It's also the kind of bad movie that delights in offending its audience in the august tradition of Tomaville films (although not quite as skillfully as Tromaville... in whatever sense the adjective "skillful" can be applied to Tromaville films!)
A bizarre intro set in 1620 with gratuitous pilgrim nudity introduces us to a murderous undead(?) turkey (a fabulously terrible puppet that looks more like a Skeksi from The Dark Crystal than an actual turkey). Then we jump to the present day with a group of college students (whose relationships to each other are never entirely clear) getting ready to leave campus for Thanksgiving break. I guess they're all going to the same place, but their jeep breaks down and they camp overnight. And of course they disturb the offensively proverbial "ancient Indian burial ground," thus awakening the turkey, who then of course murders people with amusing one-liners, including the film's tag line: "Gobble-gobble, motherfucker!"
As an appreciator of bad horror movies, I liked Thankskilling, but trashy horror is at its most charming when it's either innocently bad like the sublimely terrible Troll 2 or skillfully awful like the aforementioned Tromaville movies. Thankskilling isn't either innocently bad or as well done as Tromaville entrees (this turkey is a little raw). Also, it occasionally steps close to (if not over) the line between "being offensive as subversive meta-commentary" and "just using this as excuse to get away with being offensive." I was never quite sure where to think Thankskilling was landing in all this.
Maybe I'll get a chance to figure it out if I ever watch Thankskilling 3 (which is I guess the search for Thankskilling 2...).
And there you have it! Four Thanksgiving horror movies to watch instead of terrorizing your relatives with COVID-19. Seriously, stay home! Have a safe and restful Thanksgiving!
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