YMMV / Thanksgiving (2023)

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Was Newlon telling the truth that Amanda was his mistress, and her unborn child was his, or was he simply delusional and believed his own lie about the affair? The fact that Amanda had no on-screen interaction with him and focused her concerns on her husband during the riot implies the latter.
• Adaptation Displacement: Most viewers do not know the film is based on a parody trailer from Grindhouse in 2007.
• Crazy Is Cool: Whacky Metalhead McCarty also has an enormous weapons cache and knowledge of resourceful tactics that make him as impressive as he is eccentric. It doesn't hurt that he genuinely tries to help the main characters.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The Black Friday scene in the opening. The rioting shoppers batting down the doors as though they were zombies in a zombie film, a man cuts his neck open on a shard of glass and is desperate to get a waffle iron even as he bleeds to death on the spot, Amanda being crushed between two shopping carts while the shoppers are too wrapped up in shouting at each other to even acknowledge it. The whole thing is so over-the-top that one can't help but laugh at it.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Many fans have taken to local arms dealer McCarty for his loud and funny behavior, his preaching of Black Sabbath (and his Berserk Button if you don't know who they are), as well as his nicer moments with Jessica and Scuba. It helps that, despite his introduction, he is one of the few characters who isn't a complete jerkass, and that not only he survives the movie, but the ring he gives Jessica is the only reason the main characters live as well.
  • Gaby (who some fans fondly describe as a Tatum Riley-esque character who gets to survive) and Yulia, the other girls in Jessica's group of friends, may not be as prominent or fleshed out as Jessica or the boys, but are decently acted characters who make fans feel for them in several moments.
• Evil Is Cool: The Carver is a holiday-themed killer who serves as a callback to the classical masked slasher antagonists of the late 1990s. He has several creative kills, a cool design, and it helps that several of his victims were deserving of their fates. Also, he's a cat lover as shown by him making sure to not only leave a cat alive after killing his owner Manny, but also feeding and petting the little guy before leaving with Manny's head.
• Epileptic Trees: A theory growing in popularity about the movie itself that was started by Jay Bauman of RedLetterMedia is that it's meant to represent a hypothetical remake of the movie in the original fake Grindhouse trailer as a way of explaining its stylistic changes from said trailer.
• Ham and Cheese: Once the Carver is revealed to be Sheriff Newlon, Patrick Dempsey drops any semblance of subtlety and immediately starts devouring the scenery.
  "This Thanksgiving, THERE WILL BE! NO! LEFTOVAHS!"
• He's Just Hiding: Given how many fans view what happens to Yulia as Karmic Overkill, they might fall back on how disembowelment is occasionally survivable with major and quick medical treatment and could easily make someone pass out from pain.
• Heartwarming Moments: When Jessica and Scuba escape their bonds during John Carver's Thanksgiving dinner, Thomas and Gaby are still tied up — but instead of pleading with the pair to try and free them, they urge them to run and get away.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Sure, Yulia can be kind of a jerk and a brat but man, she did not deserve to go out as painfully or as messily as she did.
  • Kathleen even more so. She's incredibly selfish, greedy and deleted the security footage of the Black Friday riot but being roasted alive is a rough way to go.
• Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: Perhaps next to Addison Rae and Gina Gershon (who's killed in the opening scene), Patrick Dempsey is by far the biggest name in the cast. Unsurprisingly, he's the killer.
• Realism-Induced Horror:
  • The Black Friday scene is consistently praised for being one of, if not, the scariest part of the movie. This because the scene, despite being an exaggeration of the "Black Friday Chaos" phenomenon, is scarily accurate to how real Black Friday riots go down, as they are infamous for causing severe injury and even a Cruel and Unusual Death to those who partake in them.
  • Scuba's reaction to Yulia's death is distressingly realistic. Instead of screaming or lashing out, he goes near-catatonic from shock, flatly asking Jessica what to do as Yulia dies in his arms. It's a believable reaction for a teenager faced with overwhelmingly horrifying circumstances.
• Rooting for the Empire: Surprisingly enough, The Carver himself seems to be leaning into this trope. Despite being the primary antagonist, he arguably has a sympathetic motive, creative kills, and the fact that most of the people he murders are Hate Sink Asshole Victims who hold little to no remorse over the tragedy they caused. It probably helps that Patrick Dempsey is Chewing the Scenery by the time of his reveal.
• Signature Scene: As mentioned above, The Black Friday opening scene has been praised for its over the top, yet still frightening nature, helped out due to it being somewhat close to real life as well as featuring one of the more intense kills with Amanda getting her head smashed in with a shopping cart and part of her scalp ripped off by a wheel.
  • The entirety of John Carver's macabre Thanksgiving dinner where he reveals to his hostages the cooked-up corpse and decapitated head of Kathleen to their horror.
  • In a non-violent example, John Carver feeding and petting the cat of Manny's after attacking and decapitating the guy.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Downplayed. The movie's received mostly positive reviews from critics and fans, but a few have wished the film retained the Grindhouse-style format from the original trailer.

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