Patrick Dempsey and TikToker Addison Rae star in an overbaked entry into the holiday horror genre.
Eli Roth’s new film Thanksgiving bills itself as a tongue-in-cheek slasher about a killer stalking the streets of Plymouth, Massachusetts, the birthplace of the holiday. The film’s tagline — “This Thanksgiving, there will be NO LEFTOVERS!” — suggests a campy, silly time at the movies. Unfortunately there’s an uneven tonal quality to this film that reminds us to be grateful for directors who can commit to the bit.
Roth (Hostel) always loves a good gorefest, and this one is no different — but he tends to hover just around the edges of social satire, which in this case seems to leave him unsure how seriously to take his own film. With a subject that’s both as inherently fraught (Colonial history! Indigenous genocide!) and inherently silly (Awkward family dinners! Turkeys!) as Thanksgiving, the plan should probably be: Not very!
Instead, Thanksgiving gets caught between competing impulses: It wants to satirize society, and also wants to be a classic campy slasher, and also wants to be sort of operatically, dramatically arty about it all. The result — although highly anticipated, finally arriving to theaters 16 years after it first entered the imaginations of horror fans everywhere — winds up seeming like a bunch of different films, through which an inexplicable Patrick Dempsey, lately People’s Sexiest Man, wanders dazedly like a lost crew member from another movie set.
Thanksgiving’s origin story lies with Robert Rodriguez’s 2007 cult favorite Grindhouse. A tribute to the gory, sleazy pulp aesthetic of ’70s grindhouse cinema, Grindhouse is actually two different horror films originally released together on a double billing, as classic films of the genre often did: Rodriguez’s horror comedy Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s revenge pastiche Death Proof.
Around and between both films, a number of guest directors contributed pulpy parody trailers for imaginary ’70s-style horror flicks. These trailers were every bit as popular with fans as the full-length films — so popular, in fact, that several of them, including Rodriguez’s Machete and Jason Eisener’s Hobo with a Shotgun, have gone on to become full-length films in their own right. One fan favorite was Eli Roth’s trailer for a fictional film called Thanksgiving that sounds pretty familiar.
The original Grindhouse trailer delivers the typical vibe of a ’70s exploitation film: It’s packed with bloody moments, sex, and sleaze. It feels grimy, both because of what’s happening onscreen and because of the look of the film itself, with its scratched print and dingy filter. This is the basic aesthetic of grindhouse: over-the-top gore mixed with illicit sexual and psychosexual themes, all coated in a layer of grime.
Of course, the original trailer was entirely a joke, so even the deadpan scenes of the Thanksgiving massacre are tinged with comedy. The satire is evident throughout, from the “killer-cam” Halloween homage to the footage of a wholesome Thanksgiving Day parade in historic Plymouth (which strongly resembles the actual Plymouth Thanksgiving parade) to the “holiday season” release of the film … in February. The soundtrack makes squelching noises at you over a font dripping with blood. Whatever this fictional Thanksgiving is, it registers to us both as shocking and entirely unserious.
The new Thanksgiving, as we can see just from the trailer, looks and feels much different.
There’s still plenty of gore, but the tone has more gravitas than over-the-top absurdism, even when it’s giving us several ridiculous moments from the first trailer. The choppy editing and shaky handheld camera work from the original, which helped deliver its low-budget exploitation film aura, are gone, as are the dingy filters and blaring synthesizer sounds. In their place is a chipper Bing Crosby tune about being thankful, and a stylish modern horror film aesthetic that helps slot Thanksgiving right into the current crop of artier horror slashers like Saw X and the recent Halloween trilogy.
The film, however, doesn’t live up to its peers. The opening sequence is strong and unnerving: a Black Friday mob gradually builds to an out-of-control fever pitch before finally unleashing a genuinely scary consumerist frenzy. But despite this masterful opening setting up a minefield of social commentary (and despite what Roth says about the film’s social consciousness), the rest of the film mostly sidesteps it in favor of a generic teen slasher revenge plot that’s just not that interesting. Not even Suits’s Rick Hoffman, earnestly working his small part as the dad of our final girl, Jessica (Nell Verlaque), can alleviate the bland onscreen character dynamic. When characters start dying, it lacks impact.
There’s also a missed opportunity for Roth, a native of the area, to explore the extreme seriousness with which the actual Plymouth takes its Thanksgiving festivities. There’s a real chance to unpack what it says that a creepy killer in a pilgrim mask (inspired by real-life Plymouth Colony governor John Carver) can so effectively manipulate this celebration. Yet beyond the concept of a scary masked killer distorting a few familiar Thanksgiving tropes, this film doesn’t really have much to say. Even the sequences that are more or less taken from the original Grindhouse trailer feel stultifying in context — whether because the film invests too little in its characters to make us care about their fates, or because, despite some fairly creative kills, their straightforward presentation quickly begins to feel rote.
One could also argue that the sordid, surreal vibe of the original is what gave all of its gore its effectiveness. The minute you take a cheerleader who’s about to get phallically skewered on a trampoline, as shown in the original trailer, and ask us to take her death seriously, it feels out of place and atonal. This effect increases when goofy murders are juxtaposed with serious scenes of local townsfolk somberly trying to solve the mystery, as though their reality hasn’t just been bizarrely distorted and upended.
By now, it’s a well-known dictum that we’re living in a new “golden age” of horror. One could argue this is a double-edged term. Even average, perfectly serviceable horror films get viewed through this higher-brow lens now, arguably creating undue audience expectations of even non-“elevated” horror storylines. It also creates pressure on filmmakers to contribute to that golden age. But let’s face it: many of the basic, tried and true pleasures of horror are schlock, shock, and crassness. Look at a true classic: the 2007 film Thankskilling, about an evil killer turkey whose tag line is “Gobble, gobble, motherfuckers.” Really, sometimes all you need is the bit, without a lot of window dressing. (And before you scoff at Thankskilling, it was successful enough to spawn a sequel, ironically called Thankskilling 3.)
Grindhouse was a commercial flop on release, though it’s since become widely regarded as a treasure of the genre. Still, the pressure on Roth to deliver something more than a cheesy low-budget shockfest must have been real. The problem with Thanksgiving isn’t necessarily that Roth tried to evolve the film from a cheeky grindhouse pastiche to something more tonally artful, though; it’s that he mistakes “art” for “seriousness.” A serious approach to a storyline about a Thanksgiving serial killer almost undoes itself at the outset. At the very least, you need a more developed set of characters and a more convincing killer.
But do we really need any of that? I would argue: probably not. The squandered potential of Roth’s Black Friday opening, a Dawn of the Dead-style commentary on contemporary consumerism that just sort of fizzles, leads me to believe Roth wants to have his cranberry sauce and eat it too. But you can’t have well-done social satire without follow-through, and Roth ultimately isn’t aiming his darts where he should be — at the notion of consumerism itself, and at Thanksgiving as a centuries-old tradition that ties the idea of consumption to American identity. He goes through the motions, but he’s mostly too busy trying to bring measured balance to a story that doesn’t really need it — and that ultimately makes the whole film feel off-balance.
Honestly, he could have just given us a slightly updated evil turkey and we’d have been stuffed.
How to stop checking on your ex — and everyone else you love to hate — on social media.
In the early days of the internet, a hater was the worst thing you could be. Spite and sarcasm had no place in a sea of people who watched videos of babies laughing or tended to their virtual farms. Thankfully, as time passed, we as a society have learned to stop lying to ourselves. No one is ever truly out of sight and out of mind today, which is why we shamelessly send bad posts of people we don’t like to our friends or have entire group chats dedicated to gathering receipts. Over 70,000 people have uploaded their confessions on TikTok to the tune of the catchy “Hater’s Anthem” because, as the song itself says, we love the way it feels to be a hater.
You, too, might find yourself looking at the social media feeds of people you don’t like and getting joy out of that experience. It’s a common habit, an often harmless way to let off some steam, but continually hate-stalking others’ accounts can keep us trapped in a cycle of unproductive negativity.
Since prehistoric times, humans have thrived on seeking out and obtaining information about the world around us, especially as it pertains to other people. It doesn’t matter whether we love or hate them; these emotions activate some of the same circuits in the brain and consequently release the same rush of rewarding feelings. Often, we’re drawn to dislike those who we feel violate social norms — like that annoying microinfluencer who overshares every single detail of their deep-seated trauma — because we’re intrigued by why and how they’re able to do what they do. These reasons could be even more complicated and varied if we personally know those we keep tabs on.
Of course, this kind of social media lurking is completely different from actual behaviors of criminal stalking and acts of hate. There’s a serious distinction between quietly sending a friend someone’s weird Instagram story and actual bullying and harassment, which should never be condoned. But no matter how harmless this common version of social media stalking could seem at the onset, it can still be detrimental. When we’re feeling particularly down in the dumps, it’s hard to see that what we’re looking at is just a deluge of highly curated information that may not serve our better interests to engage with. The feeling of social comparison that follows forces us to keep up with appearances and overcompensate for what we lack.
Despite these real effects, it can be hard to admit that it’s a problem that needs to be addressed, mostly because of how easy it is to hide. “Think about other behaviors like smoking, drinking alcohol, or compulsive shopping. There are often witnesses to this or a trail of evidence, which makes us feel more accountable to other people,” explained Georgina Sturmer, an integrative counselor who has worked with women struggling with addiction. “[Hate-stalking] can be done in private, without fear of being caught or questioned, making it much easier for us to go down a rabbit hole.”
As a result, we tend to go down these spirals alone and leave social media stalking sessions feeling ashamed or embarrassed, wondering how we got so invested in others’ digital lives in the first place. It’s a complicated behavior that brings up a lot of conflicting emotions. With that in mind, the names of some of the people interviewed for this article have been changed to protect their identities.
Recognize the behavior and understand what’s driving it
Like any other addictive behavior, hate-stalking can be a habit we develop to address an unmet need. “It’s easy to go online in an attempt to tackle underlying feelings of loneliness or boredom. Once we’re there, social media contains built-in features that keep us on the hook,” Sturmer said.
When we acknowledge that our social media lurking can hinder our happiness, it’s important to get to the root of this behavior. Take Annie, who still keeps tabs on the former bullies who made her high school life a living hell. “I’ve kept up with their lives for so long to see if they’ve peaked in high school,” the 29-year-old creative told me in an interview. “Sadly, hate-stalking has only made me more self-conscious, especially when I see a former bully thriving. I tend to talk to myself from a place of shame whenever I don’t achieve something like them.”
Sometimes, there can also be an element of seeking karmic justice, of wanting to know whether someone is suffering as punishment for hurting us in the past. Take Rica’s former coworker, who Rica said was so threatened by her that she tried to derail her career. “[This person] moved to another company, and I started hate-stalking to see if she would make something of herself after leaving,” the 42-year-old salesperson shared. “I just didn’t want to believe that she could ruin my career and not face any consequences. I’d like to think that the universe is fair.”
Coming to terms with our reasons for lurking will require asking and answering some pretty uncomfortable questions. “Examples of this could include: What are you seeking in this encounter? Are you going [to this person’s account] to torture yourself? Is this a manifestation of feelings of loneliness or anger or envy? Or are we curious what other people are doing without us?” said Jaimie Krems, a social psychologist and professor at the University of California Los Angeles.
Consider, too, the role social media may have previously played in your relationship with this person: Maybe you were “liking” and commenting on their posts, or your catch-up lunches or birthday parties were featured on their feeds a lot. These interactions may have brought the distinct kind of validation that serves as online currency, which might be a reason why we keep coming back to some people’s accounts.
Limit your exposure
At the end of any relationship, we’re often told to unfollow or even block the other person on all social media platforms. But for those who find it hard to cut them off immediately and completely, detaching from a stalkee and their daily activity is nonetheless necessary.
Lily, a 22-year-old writer, admitted that checking up on her ex-boyfriend and his new partner two years after the breakup just adds salt to her emotional wounds. “Even if the intention behind it was to feel better about myself, it would always make me feel like shit because, at the end of the day, I used to be that girl beside him, making plans of growing old together,” she said. Seeing anniversary and milestone posts on her feed from her ex is particularly difficult for her: “It would remind me of how things were like when the breakup was still fresh: crying nonstop, screaming my lungs out in pain, and feeling all this anger and frustration and grief.”
It’s important to track moments when you feel the need to social stalk and assess what factors those instances may have in common. Were you in a specific place that reminded you of them, hanging out with certain people, or doing a particular activity? Maybe this could also be indicative of a larger personal issue we have, like in Annie’s case. “Now, I’m trying to see if my hate-stalking is a manifestation of my demand avoidance: if I’m doing this just to ignore what I know I should be doing to make my life better,” she said.
Put a plan in motion
If we’re not careful, social media stalking can go from a harmless little treat to a negative reflex that bleeds into our daily routines. “Acknowledging the urge as it creeps up on us and giving ourselves a few minutes to pause before acting on it could be helpful,” said Krems. Exercising this self-restraint, even in small increments, can help us think about whether it’s something we really want to do or just a habit our brains and thumbs have grown accustomed to.
Other long-term examples that could help kill this habit include losing ourselves in something else — maybe a hobby, a piece of media, or even another person. “Lately, I’ve found that crocheting and going on TikTok instead helps me,” Lily said. It can also help to open up to someone we trust so we can process what we feel rather than forcing ourselves to seek out information that confirms our destructive beliefs.
In extreme cases, like those that require a total digital detox, we could find ourselves making excuses instead of taking steps to curb our behavior. In this case, Sturmer invites us to examine why this may be the case: “Perhaps you don’t want to put boundaries in place because you say you really need social media for other purposes. Ask yourself if this is really true, and try to seek out ways to get only the information that you need elsewhere.”
Accept that it’s a normal part of life
Contrary to popular belief, keeping tabs on the social media of people you don’t like isn’t always this shameful activity that signals the beginning of a depressive episode or unhealthy obsession; when taken at face value, it’s just another means to acquire new knowledge — and if we find exactly what we’re looking for, it could significantly improve our outlook. “I found out that my former coworker didn’t get into the company she wanted and was forced into retirement,” Rica said. “It’s amusing to see her trying to convince everyone that she’s happy with how her life looks now.”
On other occasions, it can even serve as a means to strengthen or start relationships. “There’s a possibility that shared hate might actually bring us together more than shared love. If we both hate the same person, perhaps we have underlying similarities that could make us great cooperators,” said Krems. “This coalitional hate-stalking can feel good because we’re both discovering information and bonding together, which could have great payoffs for our well-being.”
While this may seem like a reach to some, let’s face it: No matter how much we claim to have moved on, the right mixture of boredom and curiosity could compel us to check up on a certain person. The schadenfreude that can come with that doesn’t mean we’re irredeemable or evil human beings. Our feelings toward the events in our lives, and the people we meet, are valid and varied. As long as our social media check-ins aren’t an obsessive and organized effort to ruin someone else’s life or to hurt ourselves, we don’t need to beat ourselves up when we go down the same ol’ spiral.
“Not liking someone and wishing them ill, should we be doing that? That’s a question that depends on our morality,” Krems said. “But does almost everyone do that? I think the answer is yes.”
What good is a miraculous vaccine if nobody wants to take it?
The Covid-19 vaccines were hailed as a miracle upon their arrival. They were delivered earlier than anyone thought possible and proved exceptionally effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths. More than 80 percent of all Americans, and more than 90 percent of adults, received at least one dose of the vaccines, remarkable penetration in a country where less than half of people get their flu shot every year.
But so far this year, just 7 percent of adults have received a dose of the new vaccine formulation that became available in September — compared to 28 percent who have gotten a flu shot.
This raises a question that would have seemed unthinkable three years ago: What if we make a miraculous vaccine and nobody wants it?
Ever since that first shot, the public’s interest in subsequent Covid-19 vaccines has been steadily dropping. Less than 70 percent of the US finished their initial two-dose vaccine series. Less than 20 percent of the country received last year’s bivalent booster shot.
Experts say the public’s disinterest in the latest Covid shots is likely a combination of poor messaging from authorities, a diminishing fear about a virus that three years ago was wholly unknown, and the political polarization of the pandemic itself. But whatever the reasons, that vaccine ambivalence still poses a health threat.
Elderly people and very young infants continue to have a higher chance than the rest of the population that they will be hospitalized with Covid-19. Vaccination rates have fallen off for the former group, who are also most likely to die from an infection, and they were never strong to begin with for the latter; 95 percent of children under 4 are unvaccinated. About half of seniors being hospitalized for Covid-19 these days have never gotten a vaccine, experts say, affirming that the unvaccinated continue to be hit much harder by the virus.
Infectious disease experts saw 2023 as a pivotal year for the country’s transition out of the pandemic. It would test whether the US health system could marshal a strong response to the winter Covid-cold-and-flu season, specifically through a successful vaccination campaign. The dismal start to that campaign may force a difficult question upon the public health community: If Americans don’t care about getting vaccinated against Covid-19 anymore, what do we do now?
Why Americans aren’t getting their Covid-19 shots
Part of the story is simply human nature. Covid-19 arrived in 2020 behaving strangely (with so much asymptomatic transmission) and incurring a deadly toll (the first iteration of the virus was notably more virulent than the flu). Much of the economy shut down and people were confined to their homes. It was a scary time and vaccines offered hope for a future in which not only would you be less likely to get seriously ill but that life could get back to normal. When shots went out to hospitals, pharmacies, and vaccination clinics in December of 2020, Americans were eager to get them.
But three years and multiple new vaccine formulations later, the novelty is gone.
Americans aren’t as worried about Covid-19 now. About two-thirds of US adults said they were not concerned about getting seriously ill from Covid-19 in a September survey from the KFF health policy think tank. That figure was about the same for the flu and RSV, suggesting Americans have come to view the novel coronavirus as a similar health risk to other cold-weather illnesses that have been circulating for a long time.
“People aren’t scared of this virus anymore,” Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told me.
As evidence, he recounted that he had ridden the subway with “100 screaming, maskless” football fans heading to the Eagles-Cowboys game. “No one on that subway car had a mask on,” he said. “We are close to winter, and this is in theory a winter virus.”
Familiarity is one part of that change in attitudes. Another is political polarization: Republicans, both the rank-and-file and their political leaders, have grown more and more hostile toward the Covid-19 vaccines, with a general skepticism toward government mandates spilling into conspiracy theories and disinformation. (Offit marveled at that turn of events: These vaccines are “the most amazing medical and scientific accomplishment” of his lifetime and “the greatest accomplishment of the Trump administration.” And yet.)
Only 25 percent of Republicans said in KFF’s September poll that they would get the latest version of the Covid-19 vaccine this fall or winter. Another 40 percent of the party said they had received an earlier dose but would not get the new shot and 36 percent said they had never been vaccinated at all. To compare, 45 percent of independents said they would get the new shot and 69 percent of Democrats said they would. While reality does not exactly match up to those responses, the gap between Republicans and the rest shows partisanship is driving vaccine attitudes.
“It’s become part of somebody’s identity that they’re not somebody who gets Covid shots in particular,” said Dr. Céline Gounder, a senior fellow at KFF and editor-at-large for Public Health at KFF Health News. “That may spill over to vaccines, but it starts with Covid.”
There are worrying signs of a more general resurgence in vaccine skepticism: 3 percent of US schoolchildren reported a vaccine exemption for the coming school year, the highest share on record according to the CDC. Ten states have an exemption rate above 5 percent; only two did three years ago.
But while that uptick is worrying, it is clear, as Gounder noted, that Covid is a special case for Americans. Flu vaccination rates last season were in line with rates from before the pandemic: Lower than you’d like (57 percent for kids, 46 percent for adults) but historically unremarkable. Flu vaccinations this year are on track with last year’s pace, according to the CDC.
People were already accustomed to the annual flu vaccination campaign before the pandemic and they seem to be mostly sticking to old habits. So why do so many seem so immune to the public health community’s plea that they get a Covid-19 shot at the same time?
The other factor may be that Americans have become inured to such public health messaging after years of living through a public health emergency.
Partly, the vaccines are a victim of their own success. The initial clinical trials reported incredible results not only in stopping severe disease (the primary public health goal) but in stopping any illness at all. The gobsmacked headlines may have led the public to expect to never get sick at all, and public health messages failed to break through with the reality check that while you may still feel sick, it is much less likely you’ll end up in the hospital — and that should count as a win. When reality didn’t meet expectations, seeds of doubt and distrust were sown.
For the later shots, Gounder said the public health messaging itself, which generally encourages everyone to get another Covid-19 shot, may be part of the problem. People are more familiar with the virus now — and that means many have a general idea of how it works. They may know, for example, that age and chronic health conditions are the best indicators of one’s risk of serious illness or death from an infection.
Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, have targeted their recommendations to people over 65 and people at a heightened risk because of their health, as well as the people who live with and care for those at-risk folks.
The United States has to date instead erred toward simplicity with its vaccine messaging and recommendations: Everyone older than 6 months is recommended for yet another shot. Experts acknowledge there is an argument for that strategy. But as Covid-19 has become a more familiar illness and people have a better understanding of it, there may be a better argument for a more nuanced approach.
At this point, people have likely lived through an infection of their own and have firsthand experience with Covid-19. The initial vaccination campaign was crucial because people had no immunity to Covid-19 at all; the population was naive. But the public health reality has changed three years later: Most people have either been vaccinated or infected or both.
So when the official vaccine guidance remains largely unchanged, and the messages public health authorities are sending fail to acknowledge the varying risks or that people do possess some immunity, they may end up being ignored.
“I understand some of the skepticism,” Gounder said. “When you tell everyone you’re all at risk, get your shot, it doesn’t correspond with your lived reality.”
What the future may hold for Covid-19 vaccines
There are short-term steps the US could be taking to bolster Covid-19 vaccine uptake, particularly for the most vulnerable. Additional funding for nursing homes to hold vaccination campaigns, for example: Only 17 percent of nursing home residents are up to date on their shots. Experts also stressed the importance of communicating to people that the very young can get seriously ill with Covid-19; even if they don’t die, the health complications can be serious. Gounder said she’d like to see that messaging start with more of a focus on pregnant women, who can pass some immunity to their unborn child.
But there is a larger question brewing when only 10 percent of the US population is showing much urgency about getting a Covid-19 vaccine: How are we going to keep doing this?
Pfizer said in September that it expected about one in four Americans to get the latest shot. Though there is still time, current vaccination rates are well short of that goal. It is an open question how the for-profit pharmaceutical manufacturers who produce these vaccines will respond to what the market is telling them.
Gounder said it is difficult to imagine a cessation of Covid-19 vaccinations entirely. The public health case for immunizing the elderly in particular is strong. But drug makers may scale back their production, especially if the government’s recommendations become more targeted.
The federal government is putting a lot of money behind pharma’s pursuit of a universal Covid vaccine, but until those efforts bear fruit (if they ever do), there may also be less interest in producing new formulations of the vaccine after uptake for this season’s new shot was so paltry.
The known unknowns for the future, which could spur another round of investment and interest in updated Covid-19 vaccines, are biological. The virus has been evolving and will continue to evolve and could, in theory, reach a point where the current vaccines are ineffectual.
The other question mark is inside of us. The reason many people still enjoy protection from serious illness is because our body’s T-cells are familiar with the virus and can activate when they detect it. They may not be able to stop an infection entirely (that is the role of antibodies, which are quicker to fade) but they can stamp out the virus before a person becomes too sick.
What we don’t know today is how long our T cells’ memory will last, and how durable that immunity really is. The only way to find out is for more time to pass.