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4K Ultra HD SteelBook Review: THANKSGIVING

Home » 4K Ultra HD SteelBook Review: THANKSGIVING

Oct 21 Posted by in DVD/Blu-ray, Reviews | Comments

It’s Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and RightMart owner Thomas Wright (Rick Hoffman, Suits) has decided to open his store on Thanksgiving rather than waiting for Black Friday. However, the sale quickly turns into chaos, with people trampling over one another to get their hands on a free toaster. The incident leaves several dead and many more injured. Witnessing the event first-hand are Wright’s daughter Jessica (Nell Verlaque) and her friends—Bobby (Jalen Thomas Brooks), Gaby (Addison Rae), Evan (Tomaso Sanelli), Scuba (Gabriel Davenport), and Yulia (Jenna Warren).

Cut to one year later, and the town is once again preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving, and Thomas Wright doesn’t seem to have learned his lesson—he is once again contemplating opening his store for a big Thanksgiving sale, thanks in large part to encouragement from his new fiancée Kathleen (Karen Cliche). However, someone is still bitter about the events of last year, and starts to take it out on the town’s residents. A killer wearing a mask of John Carver’s face—the first governor of Plymouth Colony—is brutally decapitating and murdering people who had some connection to the previous year’s deadly riot. He’s also tagging the teens on his social media posts, showing some sort of dinner table with their names on the seat place cards—will they be his next victims?! Investigating the murders is Sheriff Eric Newlon (Patrick Dempsey, Grey’s Anatomy), who also witnessed the previous year’s mayhem. Everyone in town is a suspect, but looking particularly guilty are former RightMart employee Mitch Collins (Ty Victor Olsson), who lost his wife in the riot, and has been very vocal about the incident ever since. And Bobby, whose promising pitching career was cut short after he got badly hurt in the incident—he has been ghosting former girlfriend Jessica ever since. Or could it be Jessica’s new boyfriend Ryan (Milo Manheim, Journey To Bethlehem), who people don’t know much about? As the body pieces start piling up, the teens take it upon themselves to start trying to identify the killer before they end up as part of his ghastly Thanksgiving dinner.

Thanksgiving is a thoroughly-entertaining slasher from director Eli Roth, which feels like a throwback to the classic horror movies of the 1980s, both in look, style and feel. Fall in a small New England town is the perfect setting, and it’s filled with lots of quirky and suspicious characters. As a Massachusetts native myself, the actors and filmmakers have nailed the accents and dialogue to really make it feel natural and authentic, while also making the audience laugh. The writing is quite clever, having our John Carver killer deploy very creative, unique and sometimes elaborate Thanksgiving-themed ways of dispatching his victims, that are both gruesome and fun. At the same time, there is this classic feeling to the kills, having fun with the architypes and tropes you usually see in these slasher movies. Roth does an excellent job of providing jumps and scares, but also giving the audience a lot of laughs and humorous moments along the way. This movie is just a blast from start to finish, and does a nice job of keeping the audience guessing as to the identity of the killer. There is also some nice commentary on our society, such as a really fun scene in the opening riot where someone grabs a free toaster off a body when they realize its possessor is dead.

Sony had previously released Thanksgiving on physical media only on Blu-ray and DVD, but now it makes its way onto 4K disc as a Limited Edition SteelBook, which includes both a 4K disc and a Blu-ray disc. The Blu-ray release already looked and sounded amazing, but the 4K releases manages to even top that. Colors look richer, bolder and more vivid, darker sequences show even greater detail and blacker blacks. Overall there is an excellent level of detail throughout—the picture looks very clean and clear, capturing the beauty of the small town New England setting as well as the more gory and gruesome kills. In general, the new Atmos track feels slightly fuller, making use of the surround and stereo channels to provide a fully-immersive ambiance and experience;this is especially noticeable in the chaos of the opening Black Friday riot. At the same time, dialogue remains clear throughout, and the film’s wonderful score sounds great.

Both discs reside on the right side of a beautiful SteelBook case. There are two inserts—a note from director Eli Roth, and a slip with redemption instructions for the 4K Movies Anywhere-compatible digital copy. A J-card loops over the top and back of the case, and details the contents of the set. The Blu-ray disc is identical to the one included in the previous release, and contains all of the same bonus material—a fun audio commentary by the filmmakers, plus over an hour of other bonus material, including behind-the-scenes featurettes, a gag reel, deleted scenes, and more. The 4K disc includes new material not found on the Blu-ray—over 45-minuts of behind-the-scenes footage captured by the cast on vintage digital cameras, as well as a pair of trailers for the movie.


What’s Included:

Film: (1:45:59)

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