What to watch with your family on Thanksgiving can become an endless debate, especially with the seemingly endless options that streaming services offer. To save you time this holiday weekend, we’ve picked a thematically appropriate movie that should bring the whole family together no matter what*: the Turkey Day-themed slasher Thanksgiving.
*“bringing the family together” can mean “being sickened by impeccably crafted blood”
Directed by master of gore Eli Roth, and originally based on his own Gravel house in short the same name, Thanksgiving is a Christmas slasher that follows a small New England town that is terrorized by a murderous Thanksgiving mascot exactly one year after a Black Friday tragedy.
The whole thing is exactly as silly and ridiculous as it sounds, but it’s also a damn good time. Each of the film’s many, many murders gets bigger, gorier and more absurd, but the real treat of this film is how carefully it sets the tension and finds the perfect line to make every moment tense without ever being truly terrifying . More importantly, for a mindless slasher of this ilk, Thanksgiving has a great mix of characters you root for and characters that feel like you’re tailor-made to cheer as they meet their fate. As for family appeal, it even has a cast that spans generations of pop culture Grey’s anatomy‘s Patrick Dempsey to TikTok’s Addison Rae. This delicate balance makes it a secretly perfect watch for a group that enjoys horror films but may have varying levels of tolerance for the actual scares these films contain… as long as everyone is up for some particularly spicy and graphic kills.
Of course, that comes with the biggest caveat to this recommendation: whether or not the idea of watching a particularly gory horror movie together on Thanksgiving is your family’s idea of a good time or not. As for my family, a good crazy slasher that is both fun and gory is always a perfect way to spend some time together. If that sounds like something you can relate to, then this one is perfect for your happy Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is streaming on Netflix.