Every family has their Thanksgiving traditions. Some families watch the Superbowl, my family watches terrible movies we find for free on Tubi. “ThanksKilling” will not be one of those movies.
Jordan Downey’s “ThanksKilling” is a Thanksgiving themed comedy slasher flick released in 2008. The story follows five college students as they are hunted down and murdered by a cursed turkey.
This movie toes the line between being so bad it’s good and just being bad.
On the one hand, the gratuitous nudity, sex and gore are a lot. Too much, in fact.
I can forgive the gore because it’s a slasher, however opening the movie with a close up of a pilgrim woman’s naked chest was unnecessary.
The “ass, gas or grass,” scene in the film is also, unbelievably unnecessary. In this scene, the turkey has to hitchhike into town.
When a vehicle pulls up to give the turkey a ride, the driver says to the turkey, “ass, gas or grass,” to which the turkey replies, “Well, I’m out of gas, guess I’ll take ass,” and then turns around for the driver.
Why did the turkey need to hitch hike? Why was the driver willing and eager to have sexual relations with a turkey? This movie creates more questions than it answers.
They do not end up having sex, the turkey ends up murdering the man.
As for the other characters, they are flat and stupid. All of them are basic archetypes: the bimbo, the fat guy, the nerd, the jock and the final girl. They’re so flat, I don’t remember any of their names.
The final girl is boring, and I wish she would have been killed off too. She just stands by and watches all of her friends get murdered, and then she finally kills off the slasher when she could have finished the job ten minutes before hand.
However, there are certain scenes that I found really funny.
In one scene, the final girl’s father is getting ready to go to a Thanksgiving policeman’s ball and dresses in a turkey costume. He’s interrupted by the doorbell ringing and opens it to find the turkey dressed as a man. Thinking it’s one of his daughter’s friends, he lets the turkey in willingly.
Please imagine this scene. A man dressed as a turkey is sitting across from a turkey dressed like a man and neither one is acknowledging that fact.
It was as ridiculous as you are imagining.
The movie also had the occasional good joke or one liner. For example, there is a fake-out where the movie tries to make you believe they killed the turkey for good. It’s not a very good fake-out, and I can’t tell if it’s on purpose or not.
When the turkey comes back, the final girl says something along the cliché line of, “I thought you were dead!”
And in response, the turkey says, “I always come back for seconds.”
That’s a good line, a great line even. Probably the best line in the film. But that’s not saying much.
I can’t tell if this film is bad on purpose.
Some of the scenes and lines are so ridiculous that I have to come to the conclusion that this film was a massive joke.
However, other scenes are taken so seriously that I have to believe this movie was made with the intention of being a genuinely good film.
Despite having one or two good bits, the movie shows its age. What really ages the movie is the slurs that the characters casually drop throughout the film.
Because of this fact, amongst other things, I cannot in good faith rate this movie highly. Whether or not it’s intentionally bad doesn’t matter. If you like gore and nudity for gore and nudity’s sake, then give this film a try. Otherwise, I think it’s best we let this film be forgotten. I give this movie one out of five mustangs.
