Thanksgiving has finally arrived, the movie, not the holiday. I’ve been seeing this movie trailer being played in the cinema for months, so it did its job, and it got my seat filled in a theatre. It seems like a new slasher franchise could be on the way after this first installment, and it has an ending that you kind of expect with these types of movies. But some questions need to be answered about John Carver’s demise at the end.
I thought this Thanksgiving was pretty good for what it was, anyway. You could tell it was Eli Roth at the wheel just due to the sheer amounts of blood, guts, quite literally, and gore that was shown to us. It was reminiscent of the Hostile movies, some of the 1st movies that got me into this genre when I was a teenager.
So let’s do a Thanksgiving Movie Ending Explained and breakdown all that there was important to take away from it.
Thanksgiving Movie Explained
Thanksgiving Movie was focused on Thanksgiving and how consumerism and Black Friday have taken over the celebration of Thanksgiving, with signs such as “Thanksgiving,” not “Thanks buying,” and scenes such as the opening section, which reminded me of those viral videos that we could see in line in 2015 of people going absolutely mental over the stores that would slash their prices.
This was something that was highlighted in the movie and the main reason why the whole plot of the movie was occurring. However, in this feature, it wasn’t only the prices that were getting slashed, if you know what I mean.
Stemming all the way back to the year before Thanksgiving, we saw that Mitch was a manager of a Walmart-inspired store owned by an individual called Thomas, somebody who was enjoying Thanksgiving inside his mansion with his family. But he made his workers open the store on that day in order to make more profits for the company and line his own pockets.
With the blinded-by-greed attitude that people had over Black Friday, we saw scenes of the store being utterly obliterated, and it led to several people dying inside of the store due to people caring more for the deals instead of the lives of others.
Due to Thomas’s daughter going into the store earlier than everybody else with her friends and taunting the people that were outside. And with Evan recording a video that got uploaded online of the tragic events, it meant that they were on the list for the serial killer who hid behind a John Carver mask.
Just in case you didn’t know, John Carver was one of the pilgrims who was on the Mayflower voyage, which led to the creation of the Plymouth Colony in the United States. Hence, the movie was set in Plymouth.
Bobby Was The Killer?
As we got to the end of the movie, many individuals were getting picked off, such as the security guard who ran away in the opening scene—the civilians who had no regard for human life, Yulia, Kathleen, and many more.
We saw them on the Thanksgiving parade. John Carver kidnapped the rest of them and had them sit around his dinner table for Thanksgiving. During this scene, we saw that he bludgeoned Evans’s head on the table while giving some witty lines about going viral and hitting the audience on the head with what they needed.
With Carver looking to go round the table and take out everybody that was seated, the ring that Jessica was given acted as a blade. She was able to get her hands out of the pieces of rope that were tied around it, and she handed it over to Scuba, who was also able to do the same thing. This led to her being able to flee after managing to get over the fence and running from Carver.
After this, Jessica made it back to the town and saw the sheriff, who knew them, lying on the floor, and as she looked over at the warehouse, she took his weapon and entered. Once she was in there, she saw Bobby, her former love interest, leaving, which made her believe that he was John Carver, the serial killer.
But before she could do anything, the sheriff came in behind her and said that he’d go after her with it. It seems like Bobby was confirmed to be the killer, and the other authorities were called to deal with the matter.
Thanksgiving Movie Ending Explained
Shortly afterward, as Sheriff Newland was about to take Jessica away with her, she noticed his boots in the greenery that was on it, tying back to something he said earlier about noticing the smallest mistakes and not being able to trust anybody.
The greenery that was on his boots was from the forest that she had to run through to escape, and she put two and two together and came to the realization that it was him who was the killer.
When it came to revealing why he did it, he revealed how, on that fateful night one year ago, in the opening scene, somebody he cared about, Amanda, was killed in the massacre that took place from the Shoppers. The sheriff was having an affair with Mitchell’s wife, Amanda. She was pregnant with his child, and she was planning on leaving Mitch.
They were going to start a new life together and have a family. However, on that night, it was all taken away from him by the shoppers and the Group of school kids. And he believed that it wouldn’t have happened if the group that was in there to start with hadn’t been taunting everybody out the front, causing the crowd to get rolled up and aggravated.
This made sense as to why he killed the woman who worked in the diner, as she was the one who rammed her trolley into Amanda. The security guard because he ran away and didn’t do his job. The young couple they were getting the crowd to turn into a riot. And then he planned to kill the rest of the group for taunting them—also Thomas Wright for being negligent in the setting up of the Black Friday event.
With Jessica capturing his confession on a live stream with Bobby’s phone that was confiscated by the authorities as evidence, we saw that she and Bobby tried to escape before he could kill them, and they did manage to do so. This was because she fired a musket, the only weapon that she’d ever fired, and it caused the canister to explode and us to believe that John Carver was killed in the fire.
The officers said that nothing would have survived the blaze. But in true horror slasher style, we know that that’s not the case, and I think it sets up a sequel.
There was no post-credit scene in this movie, which was a shame, as maybe the dragging of an axe or something like that would have been a nice addition to confirm that a sequel could have been in the works. But I feel we could see a second movie for sure.
Thanksgiving Movie Overall Review
Come to think of it, the story was probably as fleshed out as the hostile movies. It wasn’t too deep, but there was enough there to be satisfied. You’re not here for Hitchcock, and you’re just here for the blood and interesting deaths.
Some of the deaths rival that of Saw X, and I’d say were even more brutal, something which I think is quite hard to do. The woman being cut in half the neck and turning the trampoline all of them were so creative and quite hard to watch at points.
The performances in this movie were nothing to write home about, but they were pretty decent. All of the students were on the same level, and I don’t think any of them shined massively. They were there to essentially the shells of people that got killed.
Patrick Dempsey was pretty good and delivered what you’d expect from him. And Rick Hoffman was decent, too. They were probably the two strongest performers, but that’s no surprise, as they were the most seasoned actors that were there on set.
John Carver as a villain is one that could go on to be iconic in years to come, and it does have the foundations there. But I don’t think he’s as menacing in terms of appearance as he could possibly be.
You look at Jason and Freddie, and they’re the epitome of something you’d hate to see in your nightmares or whilst alone in a dark room. John Carver is just a guy with a cheap mask. If the image were to be improved in the future, maybe incorporating the fact that he’s been burned would work perfectly.
I think this movie served its purpose well, and I think word of mouth will probably do it justice because I think it’s better than an initial assumption. The opening section in itself, climaxing with the gun being fired into the air with the movie title appearing and fading out, was pretty cool. And it was kind of a homage to original slasher movies.
Over on letterbox, I gave this movie a three-star out of five, which is pretty good for the type of movie that it is. So if you’ve not watched it yet, I’d recommend it because it is enjoyable. So there you have it, Thanksgiving ending explained.
