MY CALL: This was good. Pretty good, in fact. I really enjoyed it, it’s very well made, and the death scenes were wonderful and mean and graphic. The only problem is that there is nothing special about this movie. So I’d keep this at a “popcorn horror” recommendation.
We find ourselves in the quaint town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, where the historical figure John Carver is honored for his involvement in Thanksgiving. Director Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, Hostel I-II, Green Inferno) ushers in the holiday season with heaps of New England accents for anyone who hasn’t had enough since Good Will Hunting (1997). The locals are shifting gears from Thanksgiving to preparations for Christmas and tension is rising leading up to the store opening at RightMart for the sale-hungry soccer barbarians to pillage!
Not since Black Friday (2021) have I seen such a brutal Black Friday montage. This is a spectacle! People are literally trampled to death, limbs are stomped and broken, and hair clumps (of Gina Gershon; Voodoo Dawn) caught in shopping cart wheels are yanked out leaving a bloody flopping scalp behind. This scene just made the movie for me!
One year after the RightMart massacre, someone is out for revenge. The teenagers who posted Youtube videos of the catastrophe are being tagged in strange social media posts from a mystery account (TheJohnCarver), there are curious sightings of a man in a John Carver mask, and the strange unannounced return of a young man whose career was ruined by his injury from the event is arousing suspicion. The killer could be anyone. So our local sheriff (Patrick Dempsey; Scream 3) has his hands full while the RightMart owner (Rick Hoffman; Hostel) is handling PR damage control.
Our social media-savvy co-eds are killed one by one, with the survivors tagged in posts with images of the brutally murdered remains as the killer works through his “naughty list” of Black Friday offenders.
The gore and death scenes are more than worthy of our time. After having her face dunked in a water bath, a victim’s face is pressed on the icy door of a walk-in freezer, from which she tears her skin freeing herself only to have her body gorily severed in half at the waste by a dumpster! There’s also a delightfully juicy decapitation, a looney 180-degree neck break, a cleverly stabby trampoline death, a gutty buzzsaw death, an amazing impalement through the face, and an extra messy head smashing. Yeah, this movie is fun.
While movie is pretty basic in concept, it’s also really well-made and features delightful death scenes. The finale is so incredibly hokey, but campily enjoyable so I just don’t care. The great death scenes make it worthwhile. And while there’s nothing particularly special about this movie, it remains well worth a watch, especially approaching the holidays.
