Eli Roth’s upcoming holiday-themed slasher “Thanksgiving” is nearly here and the first trailer has been delivered, piping hot from the oven. You can watch it above.
“Thanksgiving” has had an unusual journey – it began life as a fake trailer that was included as part of “Grindhouse,” the double-feature from Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino that also included interstitial material from Roth, Edgar Wright and Rob Zombie. That trailer had the movie take on the look and feel of one of the plethora of holiday-themed slasher movies that were released in the wake of “Halloween” in 1978. Most memorably, there was a moment where a girl is jumping on a trampoline and gets the shears to her nether-regions (recreated in the new trailer).
In the earlier version of “Thanksgiving,” Michael Biehn played the sheriff, with other characters played by Jordan Ladd and Jay Hernandez. This feature-length version of the movie stars Patrick Dempsey as the sheriff, with additional characters played by Addison Rae, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Gina Gershon, Tim Dillon and Rick Hoffman (who delivers the delightfully devilish narration in the trailer). The storyline for the feature follows a serial killer who delivers mutilation and pain to a small Massachusetts town. It seems like the movie, from the trailer, takes place in modern times as opposed to the 1980s. Also Roth has done away with the fake “scratches” and other “Grindhouse”-y ephemera.
Roth shot “Thanksgiving” earlier this year in Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario (standing in for Plymouth, Massachusetts) after finishing his tenure on “Borderlands,” the videogame adaptation that Roth has been working on for the past few years (starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart and Jack Black) that currently has an August 9, 2024 release date.
A feature-length “Thanksgiving” has been talked about since as early as 2010, with various creative teams taking a stab (get it?) at the material, including future “Spider-Man” kingpin Jon Watts. It’s good to see that his (very violent) dream has finally come true.
“Thanksgiving” hits theaters on November 17.
