In ThanksgivingAt the end of, Eli Roth’s Festive Killer reveals who the killer is, his twisted motives, and sets up the next sequel. Thanksgiving began as a fake trailer featured in directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s ambitious double feature Grinder. Grinder intended to be a tribute to exploitation films from the 70s and, to that end, the duo from Tarantino’s film Death Proof and RodrÃguez Planet Terror was finished with fake movie trailers from the likes of Roth, Rodriguez, Rob Zombie and Edgar Wright. Sixteen years later, Roth Thanksgiving trailer became a real movie.
One of the biggest differences between ThanksgivingThe trailer and the movie is that the 2023 film is a straight-up horror. Unlike the fake trailer, Thanksgiving it is not a period piece and has a more subtle humor. However, ThanksgivingThe plot of remains extremely ironic. When a Black Friday stampede kills several people, seven teenagers and a local sheriff are lucky to escape with their lives. A year later, a masked killer, “John Carver,” begins hunting the group of friends and killing people involved in the stampede in Thanksgiving-inspired fashions, resulting in a race to discover the killer’s shocking identity.
Sheriff Newlon is the killer in the Thanksgiving finale
Jessica Realizes Newlon Is the Villain in the Thanksgiving Finale
In ThanksgivingIn the end, Patrick Dempsey’s Sheriff Newlon is revealed to be the killer. When Thanksgiving’In Final Girl Jessica escapes the killer’s lair, leaving behind her father and her friends Gabby and Scuba, she sees her ex-boyfriend, Bobby, wearing the killer’s mask and calls the police to arrest him. Newlon credits her with catching the killer, but Jessica then notices that Newlon has stickers on his pants, just like the killer did when he was chasing her through the woods. Jessica confronts Newlon, who admits to being the killer and that his murders were motivated by revenge..
The identity of ThanksgivingNewlon’s killer is teased in the opening scene, but it’s only at the end that viewers discover Newlon’s plan.
The identity of ThanksgivingNewlon’s killer is teased in the opening scene, but it’s only at the end that viewers discover Newlon’s plan. Newlon boasts that he intends to kill Jessica, her father, Scuba, and Gabby, only for Jessica to reveal that she live-streamed his entire confession. An enraged Newlon attacks her, sparking a chase through a warehouse that reunites Jessica and Bobby.
As Newlon chases Bobby and Jessica out of the warehouse, Jessica fires a musket at an inflating parade balloon, igniting the helium inside and probably killing Newlon. After Jessica is reunited with her friends, she has a nightmare about Newlon attacking her at home – a moment she may have been building up to. Thanksgiving 2.
Why Newlon Killed His Victims
Newlon’s quest for revenge fueled Thanksgiving bloodshed
Newlon’s motives in Thanksgiving are quite predictable to astute viewers who paid close attention to their first appearance in the film. He reveals to Jessica that he was having an affair with Amanda, the wife of a store employee named Mitch. Although it was Mitch who said Jessica’s family needed to pay for his wife’s death, Newlon decided to avenge Amanda..
The ending of Eli Roth’s highly rated horror film finds Newlon revealing that Amanda was pregnant with his child in Thanksgivingis ending
The ending of Eli Roth’s highly rated horror film finds Newlon revealing that Amanda was pregnant with his child in ThanksgivingThe ending of, which further highlights how serious their affair was and the likelihood of Amanda leaving Mitch for the sheriff.
How Jessica got over Newlon
Jessica used Newlon’s advice against him
Jessica used Newlon’s own advice to bring him down Thanksgivingis ending because, at the beginning of the film, he was the one who told her how to locate the killer. Newlon wanted Jessica to find evidence that her father and stepmother were guilty of causing the stampede, so he encouraged her to watch others closely and look for the kind of little details that would reveal the culprit.
Ironically, it was Newlon’s failure to remove the stickers from his pant leg allows Jessica to follow this advice and guess his guilt, which led her to elicit a confession from him while she secretly live-streamed the conversation.
Jessica hooks up with Ryan at the Thanksgiving finale
The Thanksgiving love triangle has a surprising twist
Surprisingly, Jessica is not reunited with her original love interest, Bobby, by the time the Thanksgiving the end arrives. Unlike Roth’s goofy original Thanksgiving trailer, the film itself plays into and subverts the tropes of the slasher subgenre.
Initially, the seemingly sweet Ryan is presented as an obvious candidate for ThanksgivingHe’s a killer.
Initially, the seemingly sweet Ryan is presented as an obvious candidate for ThanksgivingHe’s a killer. He resented Jessica’s rude ex, Bobby, and only started seeing her after Bobby left town, thus benefiting from the stampede. However, ThanksgivingRyan’s ending reveals that Ryan was a more supportive boyfriend than Bobby and Jessica chose to be with him as a result, with the evidence pointing to him simply being a red herring.
The Thanksgiving Ending Strongly Implies Newlon Survived
Newlon’s body was not found late on Thanksgiving
Not only was Newlon’s corpse never found at the end of Thanksgivingbut the film strongly implies that he did not die in the fire. On the one hand, no trace of Newlon’s body was discovered, and on the other, a group of masked firefighters emerged from the building without Jessica being able to verify their identities.
Since the 2014 satirical slasher The guest and the bloody remake of the 2009 slasher My Bloody Valentine 3D ended with the killer waking up after an explosion, killing a firefighter and taking his place, it’s understandable why Thanksgiving I didn’t copy that ending, beat for beat. However, Newlon’s survival is still likely and leaves open the possibility of his return in Thanksgiving 2.
Newlon’s Revenge Finally Failed on Thanksgiving
Newlon Never Returned to the Real Thanksgiving Villain
What makes Newlon’s survival seem even more likely is the fact that his work is far from over. Thanksgiving ends with only two of the seven members of the main friend group, Yulia and Evan, dead. Not only did Scuba, Ryan, Bobby, Gabby, and Jessica escape Newlon, but Jessica’s father, Thomas, also avoided a brutal death at the hands of the killer.
This is particularly impressive since Thomas was arguably the most culpable party in the entire stampede incident.
This is particularly impressive since Thomas was arguably the most culpable party in the entire stampede incident. Although the teens made poor decisions while at the store, it was Thomas’ decision to open the store on Thanksgiving, have fewer staff, and save money by hiring irresponsible security guards. Since Thomas is still alive at the end, not to mention Jessica and the rest of the teens, Newlon will likely make another attempt on their lives. Thanksgiving 2 (as long as he’s not dead, of course).
What the end of Thanksgiving really means
The Thanksgiving Finale Satirizes the Rich
All over Thanksgivingthe horror film makes dark satirical attacks on consumerism, colonialism, and the history of the holiday. Eli Roth’s film may seem like a simple horror film, but it has a strong anti-consumerist message behind it. Newlon takes on the face of a historical pilgrim to enact bloody revenge on rich people who never paid for their sins, recalling the bloody history of Thanksgiving itself.
Newlon was haunted by the consequences of her father’s greed.
While Jessica escapes ThanksgivingIn the final moments of her life, she is still haunted by the image of Newlon, just as Newlon was haunted by the consequences of his father’s greed. In ThanksgivingAt the end of the film, the rich and powerful escape horrific justice, but the threat of bloody revenge still lingers in their minds.
How the Thanksgiving Finale Was Received
Just like the rest of Eli Roth’s 2023 slasher, the final moments of Thanksgiving were well received and strong enough that Thanksgiving 2 was greenlit by Trystar Pictures. They closed the narrative satisfactorily, while also leaving the conclusion open enough for a continuation of the story to be possible and required. However, when it comes to online reviews from critics and general viewers, the final scenes of Thanksgiving do not tend to be specifically flagged as noteworthy positives or negatives.
Thanksgiving has a critical score of 84% and an audience score of 79% on Rotten tomatoeshighlighting that it was generally a well-received entry into the range of Christmas-themed horror films available. When it came to the reasons, the positive reviews mainly cited Eli Roth’s skills as a director and the almost comical levels of blood and violence that spiritually harken back to horror films from the 1970s and 1980s.
When it comes to negative responses, most come from critics who don’t seem to think highly of the slasher genre to begin with. There are also many critics on the opposite end of the scale and love the horror subgenre, but due to the sheer number they have seen, they expect more innovation than Thanksgiving delivered. Some of them cited the ending, in particular that Jessica’s nightmare about Newlon seemed a bit cliché, seeing the moment as violating the endings of films like Friday the 13th (with its surreal sequence of Jason emerging from the waters of Camp Crystal Lake). instead of honoring them.
There were also several critical responses that saw the end of Thanksgiving predictable to anyone even remotely educated in the horror and slasher subgenre. This was perhaps inevitable, given Eli Roth’s deliberate commitment to developing the legacy of slasher film history. Although there were many who loved the fact that Thanksgiving was trying to be a masterclass in how to act, rather than a subversion of them, critics like Rolling Stoneof David Fear felt the end result was too predictable:
“What follows [the one year time jump towards the start of Thanksgiving] is an undercooked feast of gruesome deaths, last-girl chases, some light digs at capitalism, red herrings, blood-red interior decor courtesy of decapitations, the occasional nod to that. [original fake Grindhouse trailer for Thanksgiving]and a lot of dead air. If you’re semi-fluent in Slasher Mysteries 101, you’ll probably ride the cop.”
How the Thanksgiving Finale Compares to Other Slashers
The kills, final reveal, and technology help it differ from conventional Slashers
What Thanksgiving has director Eli Roth in its favor. The man knows his horror tropes and has an encyclopedic knowledge of horror cinema. He knows what fans expect from horror films, and he worked here to subvert those expectations a bit in a way that enhances the cinematic experience. One of his biggest choices was to make the kills a little more creative than your average horror film. Instead of the killer just hacking and slashing children in creative ways, Roth had the killer do some gruesome and inventive kills.
With such inventive kills, the ending actually creates more shocking moments, none more so than when Jessica blows up Newlan with the hot air balloon. It was over the top, very out of character for a horror film and a very fan favorite ending. Furthermore, with Jessica using live streaming to expose the killer, Roth utilizes modern technology in a way that conventional killers do not. While Thanksgiving has more in common with horror movie endings than it differs from them, it’s unique enough to work.