Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving Keeps A Disappointing 2023 Slasher Trend Alive

Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Thanksgiving (2023)

While Thanksgiving has been lauded as a return to form for director Eli Roth, the slasher movie is surprisingly bloodless when it comes to major main character deaths. Eli Roth rose to prominence as part of a group of horror filmmakers whose gory, countercultural work became infamous in the mid-2000s. Inspired by grindhouse exploitation movies, the New French Extremity genre, and early Wes Craven movies such as Last House on the Left, Roth, Rob Zombie, Alexandre Aja, and other members of the so-called “Splat Pack” moved away from the playful, self-referential slashers of the late ‘90s and PG-13 horror of the early ‘00s.

The Splat Pack’s output was characterized by a distinctly nihilistic flavor, intense gore, and, above all else, brutally bleak endings. Roth’s first movie, Cabin Fever, fit this description to a tee with every main character perishing before the credits rolled. However, while its potential sequel Thanksgiving 2 might change this, Roth’s latest slasher Thanksgiving completely betrays this ethos. Despite some gory moments, Thanksgiving reserves its nastiest fates for minor characters, doesn’t kill off many of its lead actors, and even leaves a major villain alive by the movie’s ending. It’s a far cry from the pitiless attitude of the director’s earlier work.

Thanksgiving Doesn’t Kill its Heroes (Like Scream 6)

Despite the movie’s status as a slasher, almost none of Thanksgiving’s main characters are killed. All but two of the main friend group’s seven members survive the entire movie, both of the Final Girl’s love interests live to see the finale and, most egregiously, the heroine’s outright villainous father inexplicably makes it out alive. This is particularly jarring because Roth’s early infamy came from the cynical nihilism of Cabin Fever and Hostel, the former of which killed off all its main characters and the latter of which killed off its apparent hero midway through the movie. This extended into Roth’s later work before Thanksgiving’s slasher homages softened his style.

Roth’s Hostel 2 repeated the original movie’s mean-spirited trick, with the meekest, most innocent main character getting the first and nastiest death in the movie. However, Thanksgiving instead seems to have borrowed its structure from the recent hit slasher Scream 6, which included some nasty, gory deaths for minor characters early on, but then ended up keeping almost all of the main cast members alive in a surprisingly tame finale. Like Scream 6, Thanksgiving does feature some very violent moments, but the movie’s deaths are reserved for minor characters and only two major characters, Evan and Yulia, die during its story.

Thanksgiving’s Cautious Horror Is Worse Than Scream 6

Although it was surprising that so many of Scream 6’s characters survived, the sequel had an excuse to keep its main cast alive. The entire Scream franchise is beloved for its characters as much as its kills and, since fans didn’t want new characters like Mindy and Tara to die but also wanted returning favorites like Kirby and Gail to survive, Scream 6 could get away with a comparatively low body count. In contrast, Thanksgiving had no fan pressure to keep its cast around but did so anyway. Seemingly, Roth wanted all of Thanksgiving’s heroes to have a happy ending.