It is no secret that there are a lot of holiday-themed horror movies. Even beyond Halloween, an obvious outlier, something about holidays inspires the mind of horror writers, directors and producers. As a result, we have horror movies for everything from Christmas to President’s Day to Easter to New Year’s to Independence Day to even Valentine’s Day. And Thanksgiving is no exception.
Even a cursory search turns up more than 10 Thanksgiving horror movies. While some of these films are, at best, Thanksgiving-adjacent, several place the holiday at the center of the story. This includes the infamous “ThanksKilling” (2008), its bizarrely-titled sequel “ThanksKilling 3” (2012), a segment of the anthology series “Into the Dark” (2018-2021) and the 2023 flick “Thanksgiving.”
In “ThanksKilling,” a murderous resurrected turkey stalks and kills a group of college students, who find themselves in a desperate battle for survival. Its sequel concerns itself with a different, and somehow weirder, narrative related to the fate of the non-existent Thankskilling 2.
In “Pilgrim” — the 14th installment of the “Into the Dark” anthology — a family hosting a group of Thanksgiving reenactors become endangered by their homicidal guests, who want to punish their hosts for their lack of thankfulness.
“Thanksgiving” takes a more traditional slasher approach, with the killings committed by a mysterious pilgrim. One year after a group of teenagers causes a Black Friday stampede that kills three people, they find themselves stalked by the vengeful pilgrim.
While some attribute the proliferation of these movies to weird choices by producers, they only keep getting released because they have the potential to make a decent profit. As a result, the proliferation of holiday horror is because of both demand and supply.
But why would anyone want to watch a horror movie? There are a few potential reasons.
Reason #1: Holiday horror movies are really good.
Horror movies have a tendency to be low quality shlock, with truly good horror movies being outnumbered by the thousands. If holiday horror movies are better than the normal horror fare, people may find themselves drawn to them.
However, if the reviews for some of these movies are to be believed, they are no better than the normal fare. In fact, they may even be worse. The vast majority of holiday horror are cheap cash-grabs with low budgets and even lower standards, following in the horror tradition of cheap cash grabs like the “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” franchise.
Reason #2: They’re relevant.
While horror as a whole is often savaged for excessive nudity, low quality and generally unseemliness, the best films of the genre are often lauded for their social commentary and insights. Here, holiday horror does slightly better. Some holiday horror films have interesting, if often poorly delivered, commentary about topics like consumerism, political division and family dynamics.
Yet, once again, the insightful films are outnumbered by the mediocre and outright horrible ones — regardless of if the films are holiday horror or not.
Reason #3: They’re novel.
At this point, the horror world has mined nearly every topic, from slashers to monsters to aliens to bizarre combinations like leprechauns in space and Nazi zombies. Horror movies centered around a holiday stand out at least a little, offering an experience that is a little more fresh, even if it is still quite bad.
As a result, people gravitate towards them in search of something different, in the spirit of whatever holiday season it may be.
This is the most reasonable of the reasons offered, and is likely the primary reason for holiday horror.
While holiday horror may be a collection of usually mediocre, only slightly unique films, that doesn’t mean they are outright worthless. Instead, holiday horror makes up a notable part of a genre that is entertaining at its worst and truly engaging at its best.
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| Recess Editor
Zev van Zanten is a Trinity junior and recess editor of The Chronicle’s 120th volume.
This post was originally published on here
