The Last Thanksgiving is a lovingly low-budget celebration of holiday horror filled with wry meta-humor. It’s also an awkward attempt at a socially conscious horror film: the movie wants to make a point about the racist origin of the American holiday, but its campy humor (and lack of Indigenous representation) can’t quite mesh with its sociopolitical message. Making its East Coast premiere at Salem Horror Fest, The Last Thanksgiving’s humor and aesthetics are pitch perfect for a self-consciously goofy slasher throwback, but the humor undercuts its valid point about the true nature of Thanksgiving.
Written and directed by Erick Lorinc, the film tells the story of a family of cannibals who attack a group of people in a restaurant that’s open on Thanksgiving. The cannibals are highly aware of their status as horror villains: they have a white murder van filled with knives and cell phone jammers, and they compare notes on the witty one-liners they deliver just before they kill their victims. When two of the restaurant employees temporarily escape, cannibal Kurt (Matthew McClure) smirks and says knowingly, “How fun. A chase.”
The kills are glorious. Cleavers, meat slicers, and even whisks are put to deadly use as gallons of fake blood burble and spurt from necks, skulls, and eye sockets. Lorinc frames some incredible shots, especially a bloody movie theatre scene that will forever change how you view Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. The affectionate winks to John Carpenter’s Halloween are almost too numerous to count, but the highlights are the deliberately retro synth score and the costuming and makeup on Trip (Michael Vitovich), a cannibal with a deformed face who sports the cheapest plastic mask you’ve ever seen and a black Pilgrim hat.
All the actors know exactly what kind of movie they’re making, and they throw themselves into the goofy hilarity with reckless abandon. Lisa-Marie (Samantha Ferrand), a waitress at the restaurant who initially seems poised to become the Final Girl, takes the following line and turns it into art: “Who made the deviled eggs? They taste IFFY.” Scream queen Linnea Quigley even appears as a nightmare customer who shows up just before the employees are about to be let off for the day. Anyone who’s ever worked in food service or retail on a holiday will relate to the first half of the movie, and horror fans who appreciate cheesy slashers will love the humor and the gore.
It’s when we leave the restaurant and head to the cannibals’ house that the movie gets uncomfortable. The cannibals explain that they eat people to uphold a tradition that began when their Pilgrim ancestors ate some Native Americans at the very first Thanksgiving. The family has continued killing people who don’t give the holiday the reverence they believe it deserves — by, say, opening your restaurant on Thanksgiving. The film seems to want to highlight the deranged nature of Thanksgiving, which is a refreshing take. Thanksgiving is indeed a holiday based on lies and genocide, so a horror movie that tackles that fact would be an especially welcome addition to the holiday horror canon, if it weren’t for the fact that the cannibals frequently use slurs for Native Americans.
Now, obviously depiction does not necessarily equal endorsement. No one thinks that Anthony Hopkins or Mads Mikkelsen are members of the pro-cannibal lobby for having played Hannibal Lecter. But it feels like there is too much anti-Indigenous sentiment being spouted, even if it is coming from characters who are unequivocally depicted as villains. When a survivor kills one of the cannibals, she gets in a one-liner of her own, punctuating each blow with, “They’re called! Native! Americans!” The line feels like it’s supposed to be cathartic, like it’s an actual blow against white supremacy and historical revisionism, but in a film without any Indigenous actors, it instead comes across as patronizing. It’s especially problematic when you consider the implied sexual assault of the only Black character in the film. The film might be making a point about the historical oppression of Black people and Indigenous people in the United States, but the fact that it’s played for laughs just doesn’t sit right.
I would love to write a rave review of this film. It has so many elements that I crave in horror, especially in festival fare: humor, gore, a genuine affection for the genre, and a sense of goofy fun. The individual elements are all fantastic: the acting, the music, the effects, and the direction. However, in the battle between its campy, irreverent humor and its apparent desire to convey a serious message about Thanksgiving’s true history, the humor overshadows the message. The Last Thanksgiving wants to have its cake and eat it, too, and in doing so it neglects to invite Indigenous people to the table.
