Movie review
November 16, 2023 · 106 min · R
Woke Score
Lower is better
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for Thanksgiving.
Woke representation / casting
Natural mix of young actors in a modern small-town setting with no race, gender, or identity swaps from the original concept and no marketing emphasis on diversity.
Woke political dialogue
No activist language, identity lectures, or social-justice discussions; dialogue stays on personal relationships, suspicion, and the riot events.
Identity-driven story themes
Revenge stems from individual loss and betrayal during a chaotic event; no themes of systemic oppression, group identity, or modern social grievances.
Western institutional / cultural critique
Black Friday chaos at a corporate store highlights consumer greed as horror setup, but this remains light and traditional rather than activist messaging against capitalism, patriarchy, or Western institutions.
Review
Thanksgiving is a 2023 slasher horror film directed by Eli Roth in which a pilgrim-masked killer called John Carver targets residents of Plymouth, Massachusetts, one year after a deadly Black Friday riot at a big-box store. The story follows a group of young people connected to the riot as the killer uses Thanksgiving-themed methods for revenge killings driven by a personal motive involving an affair and a death in the chaos. The film delivers gory, creative kills and dark holiday humor in the style of 1980s exploitation slashers with no visible identity politics, activist dialogue, or representation-focused messaging in the plot, characters, or marketing.
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant. Original story with no established source material or historical figures altered for ideological reasons.
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
No meaningful complaints that the film promotes woke or identity politics; isolated jokes about the director’s past views and one unrelated studio boycott do not target content.
Creator track record context
Eli Roth’s low-woke history and the rest of the team’s commercial horror and mainstream credits show no recurring activist or identity-driven pattern.
Production
