Thanksgiving Killer’s Slasher Costume Origin Explained By Director

Thanksgiving director Eli Roth has explained the unusual origin of the costume worn by the movie’s killer. The new slasher is a feature-length project inspired by a parody trailer the director contributed to the 2007 retro-themed double feature Grindhouse. Set around Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the movie follows a killer named John Carver descending upon the town while wearing a Pilgrim mask to enact bloody revenge for a horrible accident that took place on Black Friday.

Bloody Disgusting recently sat down for an interview with Eli Roth to celebrate the Thanksgiving movie. During their conversation, Roth explained the historical context of the slasher killer, who is named after the first governor of New Plymouth Colony. Using that real-life historical figure as the basis for the mask and costume, Roth hoped to evoke the challenging history of Native Americans’ treatment at the hands of the Pilgrims and give analysis-minded viewers “a lot to chew on.” Read his full quote below:

Well, the design process was interesting because you want that silhouette to be great. It was Jeff Rendell, my writer, who’s in the pilgrim outfit in the fake trailer. We just called him The Pilgrim. But when Jeff was doing the research, he said, “The first governor of New Plymouth Colony was named John Carver. If that’s not a slasher movie killer name, I don’t know what is.” So when history throws you a softball like that, you better hit it out of the park. So, we call them John Carver. Then we started looking at the design, and there is one drawing of John Carver. There’s one image of him. We took that as the basis for the mask. We said, “Well, why would there be this mask?” Well, 2020 would be the 400-year anniversary of the founding of Plymouth. It was a big deal. We actually tried to time the movie for it to come out in 2020, but it fell apart, and COVID happened. So we thought, “Well, what if they made all these masks for the quatercentenary,” which is a word I learned, along with bowsprit, the little pointy thing at the end of a ship, I learned that word too. For the quatercentenary, the 400-year anniversary, the premise is they made all these masks, but the parade would’ve been canceled because of COVID. So they have all these masks left over. It’s got to be a mask that was given out that everybody in town has that’s kind of weird and uncanny of this historical figure, but when they’re in your kitchen with an ax, that’s when it’s terrifying. You know? Seeing it out of context. Once they put on the Capotain hat, which is another word we learned for it, the hat with the buckle and the pilgrim outfit. I mean, you think about the Pilgrims murdering the Native Americans. We have a rampaging Pilgrim killing on Thanksgiving. I wanted to make a movie that would be a great fun slasher film, but if some kid wanted to write a paper for high school about the themes in this film, give them a lot to chew on.

Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving Delivers On Its Promise

The origin of the Thanksgiving parody trailer was the idea of giving the holiday the same treatment that the slasher genre gave to Christmas so many times in the 1970s and 1980s. Quite a few horror movies of the time twisted the iconography of Christmas to provide chilling juxtapositions, including the killer Santa movies Christmas Evil, To All a Goodnight, and Silent Night, Deadly Night. However, despite the existence of the Thanksgiving-set slashers Home Sweet Home and Blood Rage, there wasn’t a slasher during that period that truly harnessed the most popular elements of Thanksgiving festivities.

Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving finally accomplishes this goal, in quite a few ways. First and foremost is the way that John Carver utilizes the holiday to enact his killing spree, turning Thanksgiving staples like ovens and corncob holders into implements of death. However, the costume is where Roth’s overall intentions truly shine through.

As the director explains, the Pilgrim costume highlights one of the more controversial elements of Thanksgiving. While Pilgrim-inspired decor can be a staple of Thanksgiving celebrations in the United States, it evokes a complicated specter of colonialism and death due to the historical actions of the Pilgrims. Thanksgiving harnesses that element to powerful effect thanks to the care that Roth and screenwriter Jeff Rendell took in their research and preparation when bringing their vision to the screen.