Another year, another futile attempt to create an iconic Thanksgiving horror monster. Bloodthirsty turkeys, sentient mashed potato mounds, sweet potatoes gone sour, you name it, they’ve tried it. The earth cries out for blood, but who has the energy. The days are short, the nights are long, the harvest is in, everyone has eaten too much, the heat is turned on a little too high, nobody wants to kill anybody, they just want to take a nap. They’re spitballing semi-frantically.
Racism? Racist uncles? The real monster is white supremacy? A chorus of groans. You could tell a story with that, certainly, but racism is sadly timeless, untethered from any specific national holiday. Pumpkins and pumpkin pie is rejected as too Halloweeny. It’s a tough holiday, they’re agreed in that, too prominent to ignore, but whose iconography is almost entirely food-based, which is a slender reed to build any kind of compelling visual on.
Eventually they give up and put out another cannibal family movie, and if it’s all mostly just a rehash of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in pilgrim drag, well, everyone’s in a food coma anyway, at least they tried.