Thanksgiving Ties in Horror

How horror films explore gratitude, family, and feasts

“Appreciation can make a day, even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary.” - Margaret Cousins

Wise words to remember during the American holiday best known for stuffing chickens into ducks, ducks into turkeys, and turkeys into ovens.

Thanksgiving is a weird holiday. While it’s meant to be a time of togetherness, 71% of Americans feel stressed when thinking about the looming holiday, according to a survey conducted by CivicScience. From travel expenses to family disagreements, the celebration of family may prove difficult.

At its core though, the holiday is meant to be about gratitude and love—a sentiment horror films love to mirror, if only by twisting these Thanksgiving themes into more frightening ideals.

Give Thanks, Get Scares

We all know by now that Thanksgiving is the holiday of gratitude. You sit with your family for dinner, and before you can even think about taking your first bite of mashed potatoes, you’re asked to share what you’re thankful for.

In horror, however, gratitude comes in a much darker form.

Pilgrim (Into the Dark, 2019), for instance, takes it a step further. In this installment of Hulu’s horror anthology, the Baker family is forced into counting their blessings.

When a group of pilgrim reenactors are hired to give the family an “authentic” Thanksgiving experience, the holiday goes from tradition to nightmare. This isn’t the sanitized take we often see in elementary school, but rather a bloody reflection of the brutalities often hidden in the holiday’s origin.

See, the pilgrims come in and torture the family, eventually murdering the father and using his head as a centerpiece for the table. The pilgrims, of course, partake in a cannibalistic Thanksgiving before they all meet their own demise.

In the end, the surviving members of the Bakers find gratitude for each other after facing an extreme bootcamp, forced to see that life is definitely shorter than we may realize.

Similarly, I’d like to bring up the Saw franchise. Although these films aren’t Thanksgiving-related, they do focus on thankfulness.

John Kramer, the main villain of the Saw franchise, purposely tortures people, claiming that playing his “games” will help them have a new appreciation of life. His entire philosophy revolves around taking morally corrupt people and forcing them into life or death situations, so that they can cleanse themselves of their sins and seek a new way of life.

“This is not retribution. It’s a reawakening.” - John Kramer, Saw X (2023)

Although these films can be outright brutal at times, the messaging in these movies always come back to the same thing: gratitude.

John Kramer uses his experiments to help better the individuals he chooses. He believes they must help themselves and suffer for their sins in order to achieve actual growth. While it may be extreme, he believes the extremity allows for greater success within the game participants.

By the end of the games, whoever survives typically does have a new outlook on life. In fact, characters like Amanda join Kramer after enduring his games, believing his method actually works for the greater good.

He targets those who have committed awful acts against humanity or who simply lack any care of their own life. Kramer himself has said, “Those who don’t appreciate life do not deserve it.”

Jokingly, I could say that Kramer could be our new mascot of the Thanksgiving holiday, considering how much gratuity means to him.

Family Troubles

People have always complained about their families arguing during holiday dinners. This specifically is an issue with Thanksgiving, especially during something like the election season, where family members of differing views may start jumping at each other’s throats.

Couple this with a few beers and a let loose attitude and you might have a pretty rowdy Thanksgiving table.

In film, we have examples such as You’re Next and Ready or Not, which center around dysfunctional families during times of celebration.

You’re Next is wonderful example of the dysfunctional family on Thanksgiving. Well, in a metaphorical sense anyway.

The movie centers around a family coming together for a dinner, and at first, it seems normal. That is, of course, until somebody is murdered by a crossbow.

The dysfunctional part of this film comes from the characters Felix and Zee, who hire assassins to murder their family so they can take the inheritance. If that isn’t the definition of a screwed up family, I don’t know what is.

On the flip side, Ready or Not focuses more on the in-laws aspect of the holidays. After all, the whole “scary mother-in-law” thing is practically a joke at this point. Thanksgiving tends to bring up feelings of distaste, especially if the in-laws don’t think the newest member of the family is up to their standards.

In Ready or Not, it exemplifies this idea in a big way: the bride is meant to escape her crazy in-laws. Quite literally, may I add, as she’s forced to defend herself against her in-laws who are trying to murder her.

Aren’t the holidays just lovely?

The Feast

The most important part of Thanksgiving: the food.

Let’s be honest, horror movies love to make us feel sick to our stomach. The Thanksgiving feast is no different, with Thanksgiving (2023) proving to be an excellent example.

Thanksgiving is a delightfully fun slasher movie that finally gives the holiday its own villain, catching up to films like Silent Night, Deadly Night and My Bloody Valentine. The film’s villain is dressed as a traditional pilgrim with a pretty creepy mask to boot.

It’s definitely the newest seasonal must-watch for me, but the best part of the movie has to be the reveal of the gory feast.

With his victims all gathered around the table, John Carver (our killer) reveals the meal he cooked up. A severed head and a beautifully roasted human being on a platter.

Yeah, it messed up, but in the best way possible for horror fans.

And if you thought that was nauseating enough, the film has a pretty in-depth scene of how Kathleen there gets cooked in the oven… alive, by the way.

From one cannibal dinner to another, I think it would be wrong of me to not mention The Texas Chainsaw Massacre at least once. I mean, it’s the epitome of cannibal horror, and it falls in line wonderfully with the holiday.

The infamous dinner scene shows the family gathered around the table for their next meal. Sally screams and begs for help but to no avail.

This scene will forever be ingrained in my mind as nothing short of terrifying. There’s no jumpscares, just pure horror on a glorified scale.

It perfectly encapsulates the horrors that people have over Thanksgiving, though. The in-family fighting, the feeling of isolation, people taunting you for no reason other than their own pleasure.

Perhaps that’s why this scene is so powerful. It is, in many ways, a reality of what some people actually go through. Certainly, people aren’t being strapped down and force fed human meat, but the toxic family dynamic is more common than some people may think.

To Twist Tradition

Horror will always mirror reality. Even during the holidays, we can find comfort within our favorite horror films.

Thanksgiving is just one those things… you either love it or you despise it. These films take the themes of the holiday and flip them upside down, making them fit their own narrative.

At least we have the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade to look forward to, right?