Thanksgiving

Like Scream with more turkey puns and less tension, Eli Roth's gory shocker is a darkly witty but underdeveloped slasher whodunnit. OnThanksgivingin Plymouth, Massachusetts, fatalities occur when a Black Friday sale turns into a riot. A year on, a vengeful killer in a pilgrim mask and hat begins slicing up various townsfolk, taunting teenager Jess (Nell Verlaque) and the local sheriff (Patrick Dempsey) as corpses mount. Developed from a fake trailer in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's 2007 Grindhouse two-parter, Thanksgiving focuses largely on fulfilling that mock teaser's promises of grisly schlock. The prologue's biting satire of consumerism swiftly gives way to a butcher's market of holiday inspired atrocities, from beheadings to basted bodies. The slaughters are served with gallows humour, and the killer has franchise potential, but there's not much meat on the story's bones. With stronger plotting and characters worth rooting for, this raucously amusing but forgettable genre carve-up might have stirred more gratitude.