The Last Thanksgiving



In some undisclosed town on Thanksgiving, a restaurant owner has the bright idea to stay open for the day and make all of his employees come into work, just for the sake of maaaaybe getting some customers. They are, to put it lightly, not pleased. But they’re about to become outright pissed, because their forced work ethic has brought them to the attention of a crazy, cannibalistic family who takes it upon themselves to go out every year and slaughter all the un-festive folk they can find so that they can be served on their own Thanksgiving table.



You know, I wanted to watch Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving this year, because I noticed during October that it was available to me for free for once. And I should have watched it then when I had the chance, but did I? Nooooo. I decided to wait a couple weeks and now it’s disappeared again and I have to pay for it and you know what? Screw that, because they clearly waited until people would actually want to watch it, and yoinked it out from under me on purpose. And yeah, I could just rent it, but after that now I’m choosing not to watch it purely out of spite. But that doesn’t really leave me many more options left for Thanksgiving related horror films, other than maybe Poultrigeist, and I’ll be damned if I’m forced to make THAT my backup movie for the month. So I chose The Last Thanksgiving instead, since I’m kinda low on options. They kind of roped me in by dangling Linnea Quigley’s name in front of me, so I was kinda hoping that maybe it couldn’t be too bad. But of course, I was mistaken. Cause it’s pretty bad. But I thought it was still better than Thankskilling 3, so at least there’s that.


Then again, the Thankskilling films are a very low bar to overcome.

The movie appears to be a very, very, very low-budget, ‘do it yourself’ all the way, kind of venture, but you can at least tell that everyone had a real passion for what they were doing, so that takes some of the sting out a bit. But only a bit, as the story is still painfully rough. And by that I mean that even though you’re given an explanation for what’s going on, a lot of stuff still doesn’t make sense much of the time, and that includes both in regard to the ‘overall picture’ and other little plot related quirks. Like, one guy gets stabbed through the abdomen with a giant scythe, yet still manages to not only survive, but also get up and walk around. Yeah, sure. And our crazy killer family also seems to be in possession of a phone jammer, which is conveniently used to explain why no one can call for help. That’s fine. I’ll buy that. Problem is, the jammer is in their van. And those things only have a limited range. Yet when two of the employees managed to get in a car and drive away, their phones still aren’t working, even though they are now presumably blocks away. I think the explanation the filmmakers would give for this scenario is that one of their killers is in pursuit of their car. But he’s in pursuit using a third vehicle, NOT the van with the jammer in it. So either a cell tower conveniently went down at the most inopportune time imaginable, or the killer went to the van, got the jammer, threw it in this other car, and THEN proceeded to pursue the fleeing vehicle. And by that time these two dudes should have been long gone and on their way to the police station, because the town isn’t THAT big, but… I guess not. Cause the killer tracks them down in, like, 2 seconds. So you really gotta flex those suspension of disbelief muscles with this one if you ever hope to make it through the whole thing.


And let me tell you, it’s hard. It’s REALLY hard.

What might have made the movie more enjoyable would have been if any of the acting had been any good. But it’s clear from the first few minutes that ‘talent’ wasn’t really a requirement for being cast in this film. Some of it is fine, and some scenes even end up being tolerable, but most of them end up bungled in one way or another by crap-tastic delivery (not helpful in something that’s also supposed to be a comedy film) and/or underacting or over acting.


I say that, but I actually kinda liked these two. They had a good rapport.

And that is really a shame. Because believe it or not I actually liked quite a bit of the dialogue they had. In one of the very first scenes, one of the characters moms is absolutely screeching at her daughter from downstairs, and then it cuts to the daughter lying on her bed, clearly trying her hardest to mentally prepare herself for the hellish day to come, and she just stares at the ceiling and monotones “Take me, Jesus. I’m ready.” all while her mother continues to bellow at her from off screen. And I mean, that’s good. I think that’s a good line. And the film has other good lines just like that! It’s just that most of them are absolutely ruined by crap-tastic acting. So instead of garnering a laugh like they were supposed to, many of them just elicit mild sadness and disappointment.



The other thing the film does okay with, and by that I mean that they clearly spent more time and effort on it, is the bloodshed. And again, this is super low-budget, so it’s nothing great. Mostly a lot of buckets of blood being thrown around or on people. But there are a few creative moments thrown in there, and they did attempt to show one guy getting his skull split in two with an axe that didn’t look too bad. So that’s nice. Plus, they killed a guy by shoving a baking whisk in his eyeball, which I think is a first for me. So if nothing else I’m willing to give them a couple points alone for the creativity, even if things they tried didn’t always look so hot.



So, suffice it to say, that I don’t think I can give The Last Thanksgiving much of a positive recommendation. It sounds fine and it looks pretty good, all things considered, but it’s just going to be too rough around the edges for most people. Almost like a student film, minus the fact that they managed to rope Linnea Quigley into it for a few, brief minutes. But unless you’re a diehard Quigley fan I can’t see any other reason why you’d want to watch this. It’s just not that good. Or fun. Or all that entertaining, really. It is blissfully short though, maxing out at around 73 minutes. So if you do choose to watch it, at least your torment and/or boredom will be brief.

But if you actually want something fun to watch that’s still tangentially related to the holiday, go watch The Boneyard instead. It may only just barely qualify as a Thanksgiving horror film (There’s a banner! It counts!), but at least that movie has a giant poodle zombie. And you can’t go wrong with a poodle zombie.

The Last Thanksgiving is available on a variety of streaming services.

The Last Thanksgiving is also available on Bluray.

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