"Thanksgiving" - Review

In Plymouth, Massachusetts, people gather for the Black Friday Sale at the RightMart superstore. Jessica (Nell Verlaque) whose father Thomas (Rock Hoffman) owns the store, meets up with her friends when Evan (Tomaso Sanelli) needs a new charger. However, after being let into the store early, tensions rise and end in tragedy... A year later, Jessica and her friends have tried to move on from the tragedy (for the most part...) when they find themselves tagged in a photograph by somebody calling himself "John Carver". And he wants revenge on the people who caused and participating in the events of that day. Who is this mysterious murderer? Is it new, out of town Deputy Bret LaBelle (Jeff Teravainan), Jessica's ex boyfriend Bobby (Jalen Thomas Brooks), former store manager Mitch (Ty Olsson) or somebody else? Jessica and her friends, and Sheriff Eric Newlon (Patrick Dempsey) will found out this Thanksgiving...

Eli Roth is a film maker I have struggled with over the years. On the one hand: he loves horror movies, has a soft spot for the same bloody B-movies and exploitation pictures I relish, and just seems like a swell, fun time, as he tries to bring back the stuff he loved (who else would have a Takashi Miike cameo in one of his movies?). On the other hand, his movies have mostly sucked: I hated "Hostel" and "Hostel 2", and "Green Inferno" was let down by his obnoxious, weird writing despite being a kind of fun cannibal movie, and his best work has honestly been "The House with a Clock in its Walls". "Knock Knock" is funny, however unintentionally.
So it was refreshing to have a movie of his I unironically love with few caveats.
A bloody, brutal, funny, fun throwback to the slashers of old, with a little more of a nudge and a wink to its source material and a few good pieces of character work, red herring laying and some excellent kills to make it more than just something which could have stayed a short trailer. His eccentricities are still there, but have been reigned in somewhat: he introduces a character named "Detective Chu" (Russell Yuen), and has a brief little vulgar swear off between him and Deputy LaBelle, the teenagers have that usual Eli Roth flair in the dialogue and have learned words like "cringe" now - but he now realises which ones are terrible and we wish to have killed off, so makes us wait for them and actually follows through with them; and quirky side characters show up, but here are part of the plot, actually amusing and serve a purpose (particular praise to Joe Delfin as McCarty), no more Deputy Winstons here... And he just seems to have a tighter hold on things now. The movie is funny when it needs to be funny, and has a sense of exuberance to proceedings. Honestly, he even seems to have gotten a handle on tone and juggling it now: the opening is in many ways genuinely quite horrible and upsetting, and some of the kills after this are honestly a welcome relief. The killer doesn't take cheap shots by doing things like murdering a character's cat, but instead feeds the cat (thank Christ) and pets it (good!). The cast are mostly unknowns, and good fun, and a sequence involving heads is excellent fun. The gore is practical, thankfully, and it's a fun time all around, especially since I saw this in a crowded cinema with a great audience. The movie really pushes a particular red herring, and wants you think of one particular character as the killer, almost to detriment of others, despite it being very clearly another... And it even outright lies to you about it! But the movie is still fun, and a great time.
Oh, and the main girl looks a lot like Maria Bakalova.