There's a few things that keep Thanksgiving from being a truly great slasher (run time & final moments) but everything here is still strong enough to be a really good one. Indebted to Scream and Halloween in a way it's proud to show off, it starts by showing the horrors of what black Friday brings out in people and then morphs into a steady stream of inventive kills.
The majority of the characters here fit into classic horror stereotypes and everyone does a good job of making them worthy cannon fodder. The exceptions being Patrick Dempsey's Sheriff who has a kindness steeped in tragedy and Nell Verlaque, who turns Jessica into one of the best final girls horror cinema has offered recently.
Even though Eli Roth's direction may lack the grindhouse style of the original idea, it still stays true to his sensibilities whilst breaking some new ground with plenty of sequences that have a good amount of tension before getting to their gory crescendo, which is always a little more unpredictable than expected.
The majority of the characters here fit into classic horror stereotypes and everyone does a good job of making them worthy cannon fodder. The exceptions being Patrick Dempsey's Sheriff who has a kindness steeped in tragedy and Nell Verlaque, who turns Jessica into one of the best final girls horror cinema has offered recently.
Even though Eli Roth's direction may lack the grindhouse style of the original idea, it still stays true to his sensibilities whilst breaking some new ground with plenty of sequences that have a good amount of tension before getting to their gory crescendo, which is always a little more unpredictable than expected.