I watched a movie yesterday on a whim that wound up making quite an impression on me, and I wanted to share a quick review of it, in the hopes that maybe this will find the right people in the next few days, and become a fun little part of someone else's Thanksgiving celebration.
While browsing movies on Tubi after a particularly trying holiday-season morning at my retail job, I ran across a movie called The Last Thanksgiving. It seemed to be in a similar vein to a lot of the independent Halloween-set horror movies that I love so much, and also on par with how my day was already going, so I decided to give it a watch. At just over an hour and ten minutes in length, it seemed like the perfect little bite-size distraction, in the spirit of the gloomier, heavier side of autumn.
The Last Thanksgiving tells the story of a "dysfunctional family" type group of restaurant workers, grappling with the fact that their manager has chosen to open the restaurant on Thanksgiving Day. This attracts the attention of a local family of seasonal serial killers, with a lineage going back to a very interesting pilgrim woman from the very first Thanksgiving, determined to punish any and all people not celebrating the holiday in the traditional ways.
The main character of the movie is a teenage (I think...she looks older to me but it's mentioned that she's not old enough to drink legally at one point.) girl named Lisa Marie Taft. Lisa Marie is your typical angst-ridden, bored-with-small-town-life teen, annoyed to the core that she is expected to work on Thanksgiving. As a retail worker, and also someone who has a love/hate relationship with holidays that aren't Halloween, I actually found her to be quite relatable. The other workers at the restaurant aren't quite as fleshed out, but they're all fun and likeable, and, once again as a retail worker, I found the dynamic among them all extremely accurate.
The killer family, the Brimstons, were also a lot of fun, and managed to integrate a lot of different classic horror tropes, while also finding ways to poke fun at the genre. There were a couple of twists in there that I wasn't expecting, including a fun reveal that brought to mind The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's a movie that definitely doesn't take itself too seriously, but it's not quite such a ridiculous over the top parody that you lose the heart of the story.
The Last Thanksgiving is certainly not going to win any Oscars, and I'm sure many people would say it's terrible, but I found it to be a truly pleasant surprise and something that will likely become an annual watch for me. If you're into slasher films, looking to make Thanksgiving season a little bit spookier, or, honestly, have ever had a retail or food service job and had to deal with how that complicates the holidays, you'll likely appreciate it. I've never been particularly fond of Thanksgiving, but this movie succeeded in getting me into the spirit in the strangest of ways. I think it filled some kind of weird void that I always feel as Thanksgiving gets closer...The Last Thanksgiving feels very real in a strange way...weirdly traditional Thanksgiving, whether you're having a big feast or stuck at work. And Thanksgiving has always felt like the final, dying breath of autumn for me, so to put that spooky twist on something that also feels oddly traditional, just felt right somehow. Like celebrating the holiday in a spooky way.
I can't guarantee you'll feel the same as I did about The Last Thanksgiving, but I'm very happy I watched it.
Stay spooky, my friends.
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