Thankskilling (2009)

Thanksgiving is here, which means we can sit around the table with our families, enjoy good food and good company, and post condescending picture memes on Facebook about how sad it is that we took shit away from the Indians hundreds of years ago. But there’s also a dark side of Thanksgiving. A sinister side. A side full of bad puns, worse sexual humor and absolutely abhorrent comedy writing in general. You know I’m talking about Thankskilling. Though, perhaps that’s just because you read the title of this review before clicking on this.

Director: Jordan Downey

Starring: Lindsey Anderson, Lance Predmore

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle and Tony.

This is a horror comedy that needs heavily implied quotation marks around both of those things. It’s probably the only well known horror film to focus on Thanksgiving, which is sad. Halloween has Halloween, Christmas has Black Christmas, and Thanksgiving has this movie, where a talking turkey fucks a girl in the ass. Did that set the bar low enough yet? I think it did.

We start this off with a naked nun who looks like she’s straight out of a porn movie for Amish people. She’s on screen for a whole twenty seconds before dying, so you know this movie’s gonna have tons of character development. And that’s the last time I’ll be sarcastic about this, because it’s old hat and you know all the jokes anyway.

If this were porn, it wouldn't be worth even a dime or a bit of Internet space. But luckily it's just a shitty horror movie.

Instead, let’s talk about how awful these fucking characters are. It’s unrealistic from the start, because these people are coming out of a college, and I don’t believe they would be admitted into a college. These are the kinds of people who run outside for Thanksgiving break and rip their clothes off, excited like they just escaped from being war prisoners. Guys, it’s a fucking four day weekend, you’re not going to find the Holy Grail.

To top it off, the main girl tells her to pull down her shirt, it’s Thanksgiving, not TitsGiving. I just died typing that. I’m dead, and I’m a ghost now, and I’m still doing the review. This is Hell.

These characters are a laundry list of cliches - it’s the same cast as Cabin in the Woods basically, the jock, the pure virgin girl, the stoner, the nerd and the dumb hot girl. Only Cabin in the Woods at least tried to do something else besides say ‘hey, this is how horror movies are! Get it? Get it?!?!?’ Like they bully the nerdy kid a lot, and he still sticks around, because I guess he’s either a masochist or so retarded he can’t distinguish between friendship and vitriolic hatred. Anyway, he says, out loud to everyone, that he’s FINALLY going to have sex with one of them on this camping trip! That’s really how people talk, yeah, you got it.

Oh, by people I actually meant ax murderers. I don’t think I have any more sympathy for this character.

I’ve never thought a scene could be improved by the government randomly deciding to use the set for a nuclear bomb test site, but this movie is really pushing my expectations. Like this next scene where you see the sheriff character sipping his coffee and going “this tastes like shit,” then you see his wife actually did take a shit in the coffee. On the one hand, this is the absolute nadir of comedy, but on the other, you can easily tell who to kill first in a zombie apocalypse by whether they laugh at this.

This is actually just the special edition of the DVD.

The actual backstory behind this is revealed when our brain trust heroes go camping in the woods. Nerdy Guy tells them a story about a sorcerer who summoned an evil turkey five hundred years ago to kill white people, and now it’s coming back. Wow, with all the talk about how these politically correct people want to kill all white people, I guess this is the final nail in the coffin. Evil turkeys are the final frontier.

It turns out the turkey actually is real, as we find out when it scares the lead girl in the woods and she keeps screaming for way too long. Get it? Because most horror lead girls scream a lot? The humor in this is multi-layered, man! The turkey basically looks like a rubber sock puppet that got left in the oven for too long. Really strikes the fear in you, I'll tell you.

Somehow, they all get away, because the turkey is fucking terrible at its only purpose I guess. They drop off the dumb hot chick and the lead girl says her legs are harder to close than the Jon Benet Ramsey case, which is a great thing to say if you’re a wretched sack of flaming manure masquerading as a human. Seriously, what the fuck?

Later, we get a scene of the turkey coming across the dumb hot chick fucking her boyfriend, and the turkey kills the boyfriend and she doesn’t notice. I guess she’s just used to that happening during sex. Then the turkey starts fucking her, too, and this is the point where movies jumped the shark, guys. Movies were just never the same.

If you think that’s bad though, just watch this scene where the sheriff answers the door wearing a turkey costume like it’s actually Halloween. The turkey is at the door, wearing a fake nose and mustache. They sit down at the table together. This is how evolution happens.

With two very much alike people sitting down at a table.

But frankly, I’m glad we at least know the sheriff deserves to die now. I sure wouldn’t want him protecting my town.

Then the kids show up, too, and the turkey is wearing the sheriff’s skinned face mask after killing him. Somehow, the kids confuse THAT for him being the sheriff. This is exactly why the comedy in this movie doesn’t work. You can’t just throw in any random joke that doesn’t make sense with any logic or reason. Why would they confuse that turkey for the sheriff? Are most sheriffs in their world two feet high? It doesn’t make sense, and it’s why the movie sucks.

Even the turkey tells them they’re retarded for not figuring it out. How stupid are you pricks?!

To be fair, this is far scarier than whoever else was riding the slow bus with these characters.

They eventually figure out they have to look in this book called Turkeyology (...I just can’t) to figure out how to kill it. Why did the sheriff have that book? Why is it even written down at all? Fuck it, it’s supposed to be funny! Laugh! Laugh!!!!!

There’s a whole bunch of stupid shit that happens left, like when the fat redneck guy dies, the nerd spends an agonizing several minutes imagining scenes of them skipping around in fields of flowers and shit. It’s just so stupid, and it goes on way too long. Yeah, I get the joke, but that doesn’t make it good. Just repeating something for longer isn’t a joke.

After they finally kill the thing, there’s a retarded ass epilogue scene where a family sitting around a Thanksgiving table gets attacked by their turkey, which it turns out is the same evil turkey we’ve had to suffer all movie long. Then it says “To be continued...in space!” on a black card.

That's not funny either! It's not funny just because it makes no sense! If that were the case, I could say purple lawnmower leprechaun assassins, and that would be enough to put my kids through college. These jokes just aren't even in the same galaxy as anything resembling quality humor. It's like they traveled through the wormhole from Interstellar and that's where they got the "comedic inspiration" to make this.

Only it doesn’t matter! The movie KNOWS it was bad, because it was trying to be a parody of bad horror movies, so it didn't have to try at all with any of its jokes. Therefore, the less you try, the better it is. Like this:

Or even better, this:

Genius!

Happy Thanksgiving, guys.

Images copyright of their original owners, except those two artistic masterpieces I made.