Thankskilling (2007)
A Helping of Thanksgiving Horror
Thankskilling, which is one of the few Thanksgiving horror movies, chronicles the exploits of an evil talking turkey who goes on a rampage after accidentally being resurrected. He terrorizes a bunch of annoying college students and some other small town folks.
As you might expect, this movie’s acting and production values are at the bottom of the barrel. The turkey is played by a puppet that looks it could have been purchased at the discount aisle of a local toy store. Nothing about Thankskilling is remotely good in any conventional sense. The filmmakers set out to deliberately make a laughably terrible film that would garner a cult following.
The Self-Awareness Takes Away from the Fun
The thing that makes “so bad it’s good” cult classics like Troll 2 and The Room so funny is that the people involved were legitimately trying to make a good movie. Thankskilling is too self-aware of its own ineptitude. It’s a bad movie that knows it’s a bad movie, and that detracts from its entertainment value.
The turkey does have some funny dialogue. He spouts one-liners like “I’m gonna eat your blood like cranberry sauce!” and “Gobble gobble motherf*cker!”. But there simply aren’t enough of these moments to make this movie worthwhile. Thankskilling looks like a movie that was loads of fun to make. Unfortunately, it’s not particularly fun to watch.
There is a surprisingly large market for cheesy low-budget holiday-themed horror movies. Leprechaun, Jack Frost, Uncle Sam, the list goes on. If you enjoy this type of movie, you might want to check out Thankskilling. Anyone else should stay far, far away.
Rating
Thankskilling has some fun moments, but it’s too self aware to work as a cult classic and too inept to succeed as a legitimate horror film.
Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece) 3
