• Director: Eric Lorinc
• Writer: Eric Lorinc
• Starring: Samantha Ferrand, Matthew McClure

This week, I continued my search for Thanksgiving-themed horror films with the indie gem The Last Thanksgiving.  As I settled down to enjoy this charming tale of a cannibal family punishing those who fail to properly give thanks, it occurred to me that there should be more Thanksgiving-themed horror movies. There’s so much overlap in the tropes; dysfunctional families, enclosed spaces, repetitive rituals, overeating.  A good horror film can exploit the common ground between the two.

Low Budget Horror

The Last Thanksgiving is not good horror movie, but it is a fun one. There’s a lot to enjoy here, but before I get into that, I want to talk about how I review true indie horror first.  There’s a wide range of budgets in horror movies, everything from multi-million-dollar studio pictures to ultra-low-cost homemade horror. The Last Thanksgiving has a reported budget of ten thousand dollars.  Comparing the production quality of a million-dollar film to something in the 5-figure range seems inappropriate at best.

Hollywood movies, even lower budget ones, are subject to different levels of scrutiny, with many different voices altering the outcome.  Homemade horror is often the product of a singular vision: one writer, director, and editor. They don’t get the same resources and feedback, for good or bad.

Lower budget can mean higher levels of creativity and improvisation, clever camera angles, and the smart use of practical effects. It can also mean limited revisions on script, and a smaller talent pool for actors and other crucial behind-the-scenes roles. But, if you’ll allow me some generalization, people make low-budget horror out of love.

How I Review Ultra Low-Budget

So how to judge true indie horror?   I’m looking for how well the director used the resources available to them, starting with the script.  You don’t need a huge budget for a solid story and a bad script is hard to move past.  Characters should be interesting and fun to watch with a solid arc, even if the acting isn’t Oscar-worthy.  I want to like things, and I appreciate effort, so if the indie movie is fun, that’s going to go a long way for me.

The good news is The Last Thanksgiving has a lot of fun elements to it. Listed as a horror-comedy, it’s more quirky than funny. Honestly that happens a lot with this genre blend, so it’s not a major drawback.  

Does this thanksgiving cannibal slasher offer enough kills, scares or laughs for its budget? Let’s dig in.

Recap and Spoilers Ahead

The Last Thanksgiving starts with the first of several dysfunctional families featured in the movie. This one belongs to the main character Lisa Marie, a college student who is at odds with her parents over life in general. Lisa Marie is unfortunately one of the most unlikeable one-note characters, not just in this movie but maybe of the year.  The actress Samantha Ferrand however does a fantastic job of bringing this caricature to life.  She revels in Lisa Marie’s immaturity, from storming out of her house after picking a fight with her parents, to squabbling with her gothy co-worker waitress at the diner where she’s spending her Thanksgiving.

The rest of her co-workers get less of her attitude, but at no point is Lisa Marie nice or even decent to any of them. They’re a fun bunch, but the movie spends probably too much time getting to know them and their drama before cutting to the best part of the movie.

We Meet the Cannibals

Our cannibal family is led by elder sister Cordelia, who has some interesting dialogue about keeping her family together and keeping to tradition despite the changing times. If it wasn’t glaringly obvious she was eating people, this would work as a scene in a family drama.

With three of the cannibals, Kurt, Maggie, and Trip, a hulking man in a not-scary-enough pilgrim mask, dispatched to start doing cannibal things, we’re back to the diner where the owner is starting to realize that maybe he’s overstaffed for Thanksgiving. It’s a sizable staff for a small diner too; two cooks, two waitresses, a host (Eddie), and a bartender (Tyler?). Then there is the owner and his father, a surly man who I did not realize was in a wheelchair until much later.  On one hand, yay for high potential body count! On the other, I clearly did not catch everyone’s name.

At some point, Lisa Marie throws a temper tantrum and leaves to meet up with her boyfriend, who is working in a movie theater that only shows public domain films. We get a nice meta joke about the lack of Thanksgiving movies before Lisa Marie picks a fight with the boyfriend and stomps back to work.

Legendary Cameo

There are a couple of nice moments with the staff taking a family picture. They’re about to wrap up for the day when Linnea Quigley walks in looking for lunch.  About the same time, Cannibal Kurt shows up under the pretense of looking for a job. This causes a bit of concern since it is Thanksgiving, a non-optimal time for job hunting, but since Mr. Pearl, the owner, is a decent guy he lets Kurt hang out a bit and see if he wants to work there. 

Kurt tries several times to kill the cooks but doesn’t quite pull it off. He must settle for subtly stealing a weapon from the kitchen to kill Mr. Pearl, only to realize at the last minute that his chosen tool is a whisk. His reaction to this is delightful, btw.

We Get to the Gore

This is where The Last Thanksgiving starts to shine. From Kurt’s reaction to his whisk to the camera angle during a gooey, pun-enhanced kill, this highlights the director’s skill at working with the limited resources. 

From here the action ramps up and the pacing improves, as Kurt and Maggie crash the diner crew’s impromptu dance party looking for more kills. He picks off the goth waitress outside the diner then comes back to target one of the cooks, who gets done in with a butcher’s cleaver pretty much off screen while most of the cast escapes to the back, barricading themselves in with a chest freezer. 

Kurt and Maggie delight in taunting the elder Mr. Pearl. He confronts the killers, giving the straggling workers a chance to make it to the back while Lisa Marie cowers under a table.  He fights back and even kills Maggie with a broom handle while Lisa Marie crawls for safety before Kurt kills him with a head split. This is another great effect and shot that maximizes the budget.

From here, while the effects and action pick up, The Last Thanksgiving starts to lose the plot a bit moving away from the core themes.

Another Great Kill

After Linnea Quigley’s character gets a wonderfully excessive death in an industrial dishwasher, the cannibals kidnap the rest of the diner crew while Lisa Marie escapes to the theater.

Special mention for the second theater sequence that sees a blood-covered projection window tint the theater in a creepy red tone. I wish this part was longer, a hide-and-seek scene here could have been so effective. 

Home for the Holidays

After the stop at the theater, the cannibals now have Lisa Marie, the boyfriend, the remaining cook, Eddie the host, and Tyler, the bartender.  Although when we join the party, Tyler is working on his escape. He’s not too successful though, as he gets caught in a spiked hallway. How does anyone live in this house?

Lisa Marie is brought to the kitchen where she must watch Cordelia kill her boyfriend, Buddy, for the main course.  It occurred to me at this point that everyone under-reacts to the whole cannibal thing.  I feel like knowing your boyfriend was going to be a main course would be a bigger deal, but Lisa Marie is a terrible person, so maybe it’s okay.

Cannibal Backstory

Cordelia fills the victims in on their history and plan. Since the first Thanksgiving, their family, started by Abigail one of the original Pilgrims, has been killing and eating people for not giving enough thanks on Thanksgiving. Also, apparently this started because too many Native Americans showed up and didn’t bring enough food, so Abigail cooked some of them? Oh, and Abigail is still alive. From eating people?

There is a cool “past victims” montage here that is fun. The filmmakers clearly had a lot of ideas they didn’t have enough space for, and this was a good way to get some of them worked in.

The cannibals give their victims a chance to call loved ones and express their thanks, which gives a little more character info. Afterwards, Eddie makes a break for it and gets a scythe in the chest for his efforts.

Lisa Marie gets thrown in with a previous year’s victim and potential future family member. The cannibals tell the man that if he kills her, he can leave the closet.  She finally deals with her past trauma and overall terrible personality, reaching out to the man rather than pushing him away.

Food Fight

The surviving victims, including the man in the closet, go on the offensive and finally take down Kurt, pushing him into a boiling pit of something the cannibals keep in the living room for reasons. After retrieving Tyler, a fight breaks out.  Trip kills the man in the closet and seems to be down while Lisa Marie takes out Cordelia with an electric carving knife.

Lisa Marie makes it outside when Trip returns for one last attack. Lisa Marie is saved by Eddie, who was only a little dead.  The four survivors end their ordeal by calling the police and stashing Abagail in the oven. Not sure how they’ll explain that one, or like, anything.

There is so much fun to be had here. The kills are great, and the effects are big and impressive. Kurt’s death is a highlight, as is Linnea Quigley’s.   The issue comes in with the excess characters, weird pacing, and muddled theme. This is one of the areas where getting additional layers of creative feedback or input could have improved the final product.

End Spoilers

If you are looking for something fun and low stakes, a true B-grade Saturday matinee horror movie, you could do much worse than The Last Thanksgiving.  It’s, almost appropriately, a little overstuffed, and has some not quite ready for prime-time performances but overall, they don’t pull too much from the tone of this movie.  The cannibals are a highlight, and the actors cast for those roles are tonally perfect, especially Kurt and Cordelia. The host is also a smaller but well-done role.

Final Thoughts

As a homemade horror film, The Last Thanksgiving works largely because the cast looks like they are having fun. It’s goofy and gory and not perfect, but it’s also easy to get caught up in the enthusiasm of the cast.  Fans of elevated horror are probably going to want to look elsewhere, but for all my B-movie fans, give this a look.

The Last Thanksgiving is available on streaming.

Check out my other holiday horror reviews here:

• Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving