A terrifying new trailer for Eli Roth’s latest film Thanksgiving has dropped, giving fans a sneak peek into the mayhem set to unfold.
Starring Grey’s Anatomy’s Patrick Dempsey, the horror flick will see a mysterious Thanksgiving-inspired killer terrorise the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, where the holiday began after a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy.
TikTok star Addison Rae, Suits’ Rick Hoffman, Zombies actor Milo Manheim, Nowhere’s Nell Verlaque and Showgirls star Gina Verlaque are among the cast.
The latest trailer for the film, slated for release on November 17, begins with the killer dressed as a pilgrim walking through mist with the words ‘there will be no leftovers’, setting the tone for the rest of the bizarre first look.
It abruptly cuts to a teen being stabbed in the head with corn holders, and they’re not the only Thanksgiving table items utilised by the killer as they text a warning picture of the setup to a group of unwitting youngsters in an act of revenge.
“But why us?” Addison’s character questions, before she later tells her friends that she doesn’t want to spend her life “looking over her shoulder” and that they “must stop him”.
The trailer ends with her being set upon by the axe-wielding killer, so it may not be as easy as she states to put an end to his rampage.
We see the masked figure preparing a Thanksgiving feast, but it’s not turkey on the menu as they season a pale-looking human leg on the table.
Thanksgiving is an expansion of Roth’s mock trailer for Grindhouse in 2007, which featured Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof and Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror.
Speaking to MovieWeb, the Green Inferno director explained why Thanksgiving has been so long in the making.
“For years, I was just connecting the dots between the trailer, and then I was like: ‘Am I just filming the scenes in between what I already did before it?’ (Co-writer) Jeff Rendell and I just went through every iteration,” he said.
“I’ll tell you, the big revelation was, he said: ‘I have to just pretend that Thanksgiving 1980 exists and that it was so offensive that every print was destroyed, and the only thing that survived was the trailer. This is the reboot of what that movie was. Every copy of the script was burned. Every print was burned. The only thing that survived was that one trailer, on the darkest corners of the internet. So, we have to make a movie based on that. This is the reboot of what that was.’
“That freed me up creatively to go: ‘I can use a couple of my favourite things in the trailer, but I don’t have to worry about recreating the trailer.’ That trailer was for a movie where every print was destroyed. Now, this is gonna be its own thing.”
Thanksgiving comes to US and UK cinemas on November 17.