![[Interview] Eli Roth for THANKSGIVING (2023)](https://www.nightmarishconjurings.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Thanksgiving-Killer-Still-Nightmarish-Conjurings.jpg)
In THANKSGIVING, after a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy, a mysterious Thanksgiving-inspired killer terrorizes Plymouth, Massachusetts – the birthplace of the holiday. Picking off residents one by one, what begins as random revenge killings are soon revealed to be part of a larger, sinister holiday plan. Will the town uncover the killer and survive the holidays…or become guests at his twisted holiday dinner table?
For the release of THANKSGIVING, Nightmarish Conjurings’ Shannon McGrew spoke with director Eli Roth. During their chat, they discussed everything from finally creating the THANKSGIVING film we all saw in the trailer of Grindhouse, using local actors to capture those quintessentially specific regional accents, and adapting a specific Grindhouse kill for the big screen.
Editor’s Note: There are spoilers featured from the THANKSGIVING trailer and film. You’ve been warned.
As a fellow Bostonian, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Ever since the THANKSGIVING trailer premiered in Grindhouse, fans have been anxiously awaiting the full feature treatment. Now, over a decade later how does it feel to finally see your creation on the big screen?
Eli Roth: The satisfying thing is not just that it’s done, but that people are seeing it and responding to it the way you are. It’s really satisfying. This has been a dream since Jeff Rendell and I were 12 years old, growing up in Massachusetts, seeing every holiday get turned into a slasher film, except what was the most obvious one to us, which was Thanksgiving. And Sony got behind the movie to put it in theaters and take that risk and fill what I always saw as the November drought of horror movies.
On November 1st, everything switches. Halloween is over and suddenly it’s all family and Christmas movies for the rest of the year. I’m Jewish so the Christmas movies didn’t apply to me, and I was so bored by family films. I had to wait until January or February until I got another horror movie; it used to drive me insane. To see Sony get behind this and to see audiences excited to see it, I felt like it was time to bring new blood, to create a new slasher. It’s something I’ve had in my head since I was a kid and I worked harder on this than any other movie in my life, and I felt like, after 20 years of directing, I really had the skill set to pull it off the way I wanted. I wanted Scream or Mute Witness. I really wanted to make a classic so I’m glad you enjoyed it.
Eli Roth: We scouted Plymouth when we were going to shoot [the movie] in 2019. We went to Plymouth High School. We went to the Cordage Museum and Cordage Park. We went to the underground tunnels. Everything that Jeff researched in writing the script in Plymouth, we went to and looked at. I shot VR of it. I have photos. I have everything from the Plymouth scout. Then I started working with this fantastic company called Cream Productions with producer Kate Harrison. We did the “Haunted Museum” together, “Urban Legend,” and “A Ghost Ruined My Life” and we said if we shoot this in Canada, we’ll be able to get a lot more shooting days. We shot the whole movie in 35 days, which was insane, and that riot scene at the beginning took four nights – two nights outside, two nights inside. So, it was fast. I actually went to Port Perry where I’d shot the pilot of “Hemlock Grove” and was like, oh my god, it looks just like Plymouth. Plymouth isn’t known enough that people would recognize it. It’s not like the Empire State Building where you know whether you’re in New York or not.
Then we started casting local people. This woman came in named Amanda Barker and she’s like, Yeah, I’m Amanda Barker, I’m going to read for Lizzie at the diner. And we’re like, how do you have that accent? She goes, because I’m from Hanover, and not only that, I’m a descendant of John Carver. He’s my Uncle. We actually had a blood relative! So in the diner scene, when her head’s getting stuck in the freezer, she’s actually like, this is like my relative killing me [Laughs]. It was unbelievable.
Then Patrick Dempsey reached out and said he wanted to be in the film and he said, do you want me to have a light New England accent? And I was like well, that’d be amazing because I really wanted it to feel like a small, local hometown cop. I go, no offense but if you can’t do the accent…and he goes, no, I’m from Maine. I’m from Lewiston and I grew up with a little bit of a Maine accent. He goes, I had to lose my accent when I started acting in New York. So the accent in the movie is Patrick Dempsey’s real accent and he’s never, ever used it in a film before.
Then you get other kids like Mika Amonsen, who plays Lonnie from Hanover in the blue jacket. I was like, how do you do the accent so good? He goes, because my favorite movies are The Departed and The Town. He goes, my whole life all I ever wanted to do was be a Boston guy in a movie and so I learned the wicked accent. Every Massachusetts movie is about a town full of criminals. They’re doing a bank job or they’re some blue-collar dock workers and I was like, I don’t want that. I just want to see them in a slasher film. I want them in Sleepaway Camp. I want them in The Prowler. I want to see Mass-holes in a slasher film. It’s been my dream to mash up the Boston movies with a holiday horror movie.
Eli Roth: The trailer was just a bunch of crazy kills unconnected and it’s supposed to be those sleazy horror films from 1980. It’s supposed to be like The New York Ripper or Maniac and it fits into the context of Grindhouse. When you’re watching Planet Terror and Death Proof and Werewolf Women of the S.S., like, it’s a joke, but it’s supposed to be a fake version of one of those movies. In the context of the three-and-a-half-hour experience of Grindhouse, it works great. When you take it out and put it in a real movie, which was always the intention, the intention was never for THANKSGIVING to be Grindhouse. That became an excuse to make the trailer. The intention was always to do Halloween, My Bloody Valentine, April Fools’ Day, Mother’s Day, Silent Night, Deadly Night, Mute Witness, The Prowler, and Happy Birthday to Me; that was always the intention.
When you put that moment [with the trampoline] in the film, you better have a d*** good reason for it. And I honestly, for the life of me, could not think of why the killer would do that unless I was just trying to say, see how shocking I still am? It felt like me, the director, proving something. It didn’t feel like part of the story. I knew everyone was going to be waiting for this and thought what if I just completely switch it and do something totally different and see what happens? I shot it both ways but we showed the other version to a test audience. Out of 50 people in a focus group, we said, how many of you have seen Grindhouse? One person. Did you like it? Love the movie. What was everyone’s favorite kill? Trampoline. So most people going to see it, don’t know that [trailer scene] and they loved it. I thought, you know what? It’s okay because I’m delivering the goods in a way you’re not expecting. Then I can pay off the cheerleader later in the movie in ways you don’t expect.
It wasn’t about me comparing myself to Grindhouse and going, I got to do it better because I kind of already did that. Shock’s over. I shocked it. I made the most inappropriate kill in a movie so what if I come up with something better? I want this movie to be fun, and I want people screaming but this is the 2023 version and if you’re gonna do [that scene], you better have a d*** good reason, and honestly, I couldn’t think of one, and what we did, I think, works better.
THANKSGIVING arrives exclusively in theaters on November 17, 2023. For more on the film, check out our review.
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