When this time of year comes around, my wife absolutely hates it when I hit play and, once again, she sees the bare-breasted Pilgrim woman running for her life, only to be murdered by a foul-mouthed bird. 


"Nice tits, bitch," the bird says, followed by a seemingly endless sequence of opening credits.


While I can see her point, I disagree with her. Far from being a cheaply made abomination, I see ThanksKilling as a cheaply made triumph.  I'll tell you why:


Jordan Downey spent his $3,500 budget well. Thanksgiving isn't an afterthought here. Unlike so many other movies in this category that might feature a Thanksgiving dinner scene or something, this one has the holiday baked right into its core. 


It's the small touches that really make this film memorable:
 - the awkward small talk Turkie has with Kristen's father as they wait for her to get home
 - an extra-small, gravy-flavored condom
 - Billy waking up to find himself covered in turkey dukes
 - Ol' Flashey, the poor dog whose urine awakens the beast


In Turkie (whose name we only know from the credits), Downey creates horror's very first iconic, non-human Thanksgiving character. Complete with an Indigenous backstory, a hatred of college kids, and a quiver of one-liners at the ready, this bird slices and dices his way into our hearts. He's kind of like Freddy Kreuger in that way- we know we're not supposed to like him (as he embraces all that is abhorrent) but we do. We root for him while we root for the kids at the same time, and if that's not the equivalent of gathering the estranged family around the table, I don't know what is. 


You probably won't watch this movie with your children or your mom. Or my wife. This is one of those cases where one must do the work of separating the art from the artist and not attribute Turkie's unforgivable character to Downey and his crew. 


I'm going to be honest- I don't like Turkie's penchant for rape and sexual assault. Are the opening sexual assault scenes (the opening and the later rape scene) necessary to the plot? I don't know for sure, but they do make me feel uncomfortable, and I think that's what Downey is going for here. Thanksgiving itself is incredibly problematic- it's the glorification of a feast that celebrates (for the United States, anyway) the unity between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people in those swell old days... before all the mass genocide and forced exile that made America what it is today.


So we gather around the Thanksgiving table, recreating this noble scene year after year, without ever really thinking about what it means. To us, it's all turkey and cranberry sauce at Grandma's house. But Downey reminds you of the darker side of the holiday, the truer side. The murder. The rape. The horror.