Thanksgiving Ending Explained: To Be Or Not Turkey

The director and screenwriter of "Thanksgiving" — Eli Roth and Jeff Rendell, respectively — have been very vocal about the fact that Thanksgiving seems to be a holiday with vast untapped potential as fodder for horror films, slasher movies in particular. After all, Halloween and Christmas are well-trodden as body count fare and even lesser holidays like Independence Day have their memorable slashers. Poor Turkey Day has only one; though "Blood Rage" is a pretty fantastic little indie that everyone should make a part of their yearly traditions, it uses Thanksgiving as a side dish rather than the main course.

So, Roth and Rendell were determined to fill this void themselves, and 2007's "Grindhouse" project by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino gave them just the opportunity they needed. Adding a few days onto the "Hostel Part II" shoot, Roth shot a faux trailer for "Thanksgiving" in the Grindhouse manner, making it look like a vintage early '80s slice of sleaze. When given the chance to make a feature-length version of the concept, he didn't merely want to expand the trailer and chose instead to treat "Thanksgiving" the film as if it were a reboot of a film from the classic slasher era.

As such, "Thanksgiving" is a slasher movie that is saturated in the culture of the holiday while being distinctly set in the modern day. That said, it pays knowing homage to various horror films from "Halloween" to "Scream," and pokes at the underlying meaning of the holiday: be grateful for what you have, and don't abuse your privilege. Or else.

"Thanksgiving" is set in the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, beginning with the events of Thanksgiving 2022. A POV shot of a suburban home coupled with the sound of heavy breathing immediately evokes the iconic opening of John Carpenter's "Halloween," and it seems that we're seeing the point of view of the killer — but then it turns out to be friendly old Sheriff Newlon (Patrick Dempsey) bringing a freshly made pie to the home of Mitch (Ty Olsson) and his wife (Gina Gershon), who Newlon clearly has a crush on.

The Thanksgiving dinner is interrupted, however, by the news that Mitch has to go into work at the local big box store called Right Mart, where he's a manager. Seems that Right Mart's well-to-do owner, Thomas Wright (Rick Hoffman), has decided to begin his store's Black Friday Doorbuster sales on Thanksgiving night at the behest of his new trophy wife, Kathleen (Karen Cliche). At the Wright's holiday dinner, Thomas' teenage daughter, Jess (Nell Verlaque), and her baseball pitcher jock boyfriend, Bobby (Jalen Thomas Brooks), decide to sneak away and go to the movies with their friends: Scuba (Gabriel Davenport), Yulia (Jenna Warren), Gabby (Addison Rae), and Evan (Tomaso Sanelli).

On the way there, Evan insists on stopping at the Right Mart to pick up a few items, using his friendship with Jess to get into the store before it officially opens. The crowd waiting outside to get their deals and their free waffle iron (free to the first 50 customers only, of course) sees the kids get inside and begin to get violently angry. One football player from a rival school (Mika Amonsen) and a local waitress, Lizzie (Amanda Barker), lead the charge to storm the store, and despite the efforts of Mitch, Jess, and Sheriff Newlon, the mob cannot be quelled. Several people are killed in the ensuing riot, including and especially Mitch's wife, who was just trying to bring her husband some of his Thanksgiving turkey.

One year later, much has changed in Plymouth. Mitch has quit the Right Mart and gone on a campaign of protest against the company and the Wrights themselves. Evan has uploaded his smartphone video of the night of the riot, and it's gone viral online, further humiliating the victims while fueling the ire of protestors and creating a PR nightmare for Thomas. Bobby, who broke his pitching hand during the riot, has ghosted Jess and moved away, causing Jess to begin dating the duller, slimmer Ryan (Milo Manheim). As Thanksgiving approaches, tensions in town begin to rise, causing Sheriff Newlon to hire some out-of-town help in the form of Deputy Labelle (Jeff Teravainen).

Still, Plymouth intends on celebrating the holiday in their usual manner, and Eli Roth, a former resident of Newton, Massachusetts as he is, wastes no opportunity to skewer the bizarre ways Massachusetts looks at Thanksgiving. In addition to such things as high school students like Chad (Dorian Giordano) displaying their chiseled abs while reading an essay about the way Native Americans have been mistreated, the film's Plymouth makes the ghoulish choice to pass around and wear masks in the likeness of John Carver, the first Governor of New Plymouth Colony.

That tradition provides a handy disguise for a killer who decides to carve up his own form of retribution this particular November. After stealing an axe from Carver's historical home (thereby ruining Wright's annual holiday sale commercial shoot), "John Carver" attacks Lizzie at her diner, getting revenge for her manslaughter-ous behavior during the riot one year prior, eventually bisecting her body in two. Next, he comes after a security guard (Tim Dillon) who fled the Right Mart just before the riots erupted, decapitating him in his home before he can leave town. Carver's not an unholy embodiment of Evil like Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, or even Jason Voorhees, however: he makes sure to feed the murdered man's now orphaned cat before he leaves.

White the "Thanksgiving" trailer in "Grindhouse" was paying homage to sleazy slasher classics like "The Mutilator" and "My Bloody Valentine," the full-length "Thanksgiving" clearly uses the "Scream" franchise as one of its touchstones. As such, once John Carver begins setting his holiday table (literally, as Jess and her friends begin to be tagged in posts on his Instagram account that display a ghoulish dinner table with their names on it), the suspects list begins to start growing.

Unsurprisingly, it turns out that a large number of people in Plymouth have reasons to be murderously ungrateful, both at their own lots in life as well as those of others. While discussing their plight in the school's Cosmetology classroom (complete with creepy mannequin heads), Jess and company realize that they can't trust anyone outside of their inner circle. Scuba and Evan, however, decide that the best defense is a good offense, and attempt to do their own Scooby Doo-ing around town.

That plan backfires completely, for after Carver murders that football player from a rival school and his girlfriend on a trampoline (which sees Roth re-stage and remix the faux trailer's most famous kill), Evan and Gabby get themselves kidnapped by Carver while Jess is chased around the school by the killer and barely escapes. Bobby and Ryan begin acting violent and shady (toward each other and in general), and Jess sends them both packing, not trusting either boy.

Although Yulia is immediately taken by her father, Boris (Frank J. Zupancic), to her home to pack for an impromptu trip to Florida, Carver cuts those vacation plans short. Literally: Yulia is bisected by a table saw in her under-renovation house while Jess and Scuba watch helplessly.

Despite so many close calls with Carver and the killer's continual taunting of his victims via social media, neither Jess, her remaining friends, or the police have come up with any solid leads. During a heated discussion at the Wright home about Right Mart finally backing out of the town's annual holiday parade — a choice Thomas has come to thanks to finally acknowledging his daughter's feelings — Jess comes up with a plan to attend the parade in order to deliberately bait and trap Carver. At Sheriff Newlon's suggestion, the group hopes to lead the killer to the factory where the floats and balloons are made and stored, where the entire police force will be waiting for him.

As the parade begins, Jess, Thomas, and the others nervously eye every attendee in a John Carver mask, which is unfortunately more than a few people. They also keep an eye on Mitch, who manages to stop the parade for a few moments with his protests. Carver's a few steps ahead of everyone, though: he's temporarily ditched his Carver mask for one that strongly resembles a Killer Klown from Outer Space, and he uses this new incognito disguise to wreak bloody havoc on the parade, chopping off the head of the town's turkey mascot while causing one float driver to turn into Pinocchio when a fake ship's mast plows through his face.

In the ensuing chaos, Carver makes his way to Jess and her friends and family, but he's not about to kill them yet. Instead, he drugs them, and it's clear that the holiday festivities are only just starting.

If it seems like Carver has a fate worse than death in store for the Wrights and their privileged pals, that question is answered when he begins basting Kathleen to have her become this year's Thanksgiving meal. Finding herself in a "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" meets "Wrong Turn" type predicament, Kathleen manages to sneak away from Carver at a key moment, attempting to win this game of cat-and-mouse (or maybe that should be turkey and hunter). Not only does she lose the chase, but Carver makes sure to stuff her inside the oven while she's still very much alive. The horrifying fate that Hansel & Gretel were once threatened with becomes morbidly funny thanks to Carver's well-placed meat thermometer (food safety is always paramount, people!).

Events take a turn toward the grisly after that, however, as Carver serves up a roasted Kathleen to some choice captive guests at his dinner table. Carver hasn't set up this macabre display on a whim, however; like the killers in such films as "Happy Birthday to Me" and "Madhouse," this dinner is ceremonial, as Carver insists that each guest tell the audience for his livestream what they're thankful for. Evan goes first, leading to John smashing the boy's head with a meat tenderizer, all on live.

Just as Carver is about to force Thomas to swallow a mouthful of what used to be his wife, Jess and Scuba are able to cut their ropes thanks to a small blade gifted to Jess earlier by the town's deadbeat-cum-weapons peddler, McCarty (Joe Delfin). Surprising Carver, Jess distracts the killer by running away, plowing through some unique flowers that leave little brambles on her clothes before finding herself at the factory.

Though Jess is relieved to see that Sheriff Newlon has dispatched his men out to the location where Carver was, she's dismayed that it seems like Bobby has been Carver all along, as he skulks around the factory before fleeing. Newlon returns, having lost track of Bobby but managing to have procured his dropped smartphone as damning evidence, seeing as it's already signed into John Carver's account.

As Newlon is wrapping things up and Jess is left devastated, however, she happens to catch sight of Newlon's boots: they have those unique brambles all over them, meaning it was he who was chasing her earlier, and that he's actually Carver, meaning the shot that opens the film is from the POV of the killer after all! Newlon, seeing the jig is up, launches into his Ghostface-esque monologue (something Dempsey didn't get to do back in 2000!), explaining how he was not only madly in love with Mitch's wife, but that she was gearing up to leave him for Newlon, due to the fact she was pregnant with the sheriff's baby. When she was killed during the Right Mart riot, Newlon was left devastated, and grew increasingly angry and resentful over the past year, seeing how avoidable the tragedy was and how privileged and insensitive those responsible acted toward the incident.

Having already framed Bobby, Newlon supposes that Jess will just have to become his next victim, yet Jess is now a step ahead of him: she's swiped the smartphone Newlon claimed was Bobby's and has been livestreaming Newlon's confession the entire time. A now enraged Newlon pursues Jess, and a still-in-the-building Bobby arrives to help her out. During their escape attempt, a giant turkey balloon is filled with flammable gas, and a well-timed spark sets off a huge explosion while Newlon is right next to the balloon, seemingly incinerating him while Jess and Bobby speed away in a truck.

On paper, the Thanksgiving holiday seems like an effective time to make peace with one's life, family, and friends, to take stock and settle any issues. In practice, of course, it only seems to exacerbate these issues, either sending people into psychological spirals of anxiety or despair while creating even bigger rifts between folks who may once have loved each other.

"Thanksgiving" does right by this aspect of the holiday in its conclusion, which is typical for a holiday slasher while being subversively non-crowd-pleasing. To that last point, it's revealed that Jess does not dump the safer, blander Ryan for her heroic supposed true love, Bobby. While it's not quite the in-your-face 'ship fulfillment shattering like, say, the end of "Wet Hot American Summer," it's nonetheless appropriate and says a lot about how much Bobby hurt Jess by ghosting her even though things remain realistically complicated with Ryan.

Besides, Jess has more than boys to worry about: despite the explosion at the factory, the authorities can't find Newlon's body, and Jess worryingly eyed a masked firefighter leaving the scene (which is perhaps an homage to the finale of the Halloween-set "The Guest"). Now Jess is plagued by persistent nightmares of Newlon's potential return, seeing such horrible things as his still-on-fire body attacking her in her bedroom while she sleeps with Ryan.

Thanksgiving — the people who celebrate the holiday, the holiday itself, and the movie named after it — remains unresolved. As the end of the film states, John Carver could return either literally or figuratively. We'll see if the film kicks off a new slasher franchise or not, but no matter what happens, remember: Thanksgiving will return next year.