HORROR YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: THANKSKILLING (2008)

THANKSKILLING (2008)

(Remember, clicking the highlighted links brings you to other reviews and articles here at The Movie Madhouse!)

 Low budget flick about a trash talking, homicidal turkey opens in 1621 with the foul mouthed fowl murdering a topless pilgrim woman. We then cut to the present with five friends heading home from college to the town of Crawl Berg for Thanksgiving with their families. In the meantime, a dog pees on a Native American burial site and unleashes the murderous bird from it’s temporary grave. As it goes after the college students and their families, they discover a local legend telling of an evil Native American sorcerer who cursed a turkey to kill any white people invading their lands. The bird is supposed to rise every 505 years to exact revenge…and guess how long it’s been since his last visit? Can it be stopped?

Holiday themed comedy/horror sadly makes the laziest effort, instead of trying to be legitimately funny or clever. It wallows in bargain basement toilet and sex humor with it’s vulgar talking muppet villain, which could have been funny with some wit behind it. The super low budget and terrible acting can be forgiven and the fact that the killer in this slasher is a muppet, could have been funny, even on a ‘so bad it’s good’ level, only if there was some effort to have a bit of ingenuity behind the humor. Instead we get jokes on the level of a horny twelve year old boy and despite some decent gore, the film is even technically lazy with amateur shot set-ups and choppy editing. With a running time at only 70 minutes long, this holiday horror still wears out it’s welcome quickly. It’s just a dumb flick where characters spout awful dialog and barely react when loved ones are slaughtered…and the fact that they are battling a talking turkey, barely registers. It’s a lazy effort and the scariest thing about it is that director Jordan Downey needed four additional co-writers to come up with this disappointingly terrible flick. Five writers for this lame and witless nonsense? Really?

For those looking for some wit and cleverness to your Thanksgiving themed horror, continue to hit Youtube to watch Eli Roth’s hilarious Thanksgiving trailer from the movie Grind House. If this ultra low budget flick had put half the effort and thought into it’s holiday themed horror, that Roth did in his trailer spoof, it would have been a true cult item to appreciate. Instead it’s just a lazy effort that appeals to the lowest common denominator and took five writers to accomplish even that. Stars Lindsey Anderson, Lance Predmore, Ryan Francis, Natasha Cordova and Aaron Carlson as the five ill-fated friends with director Downey voicing our feathered fiend. Actually spawned a sequel, too.

-MonsterZero NJ

1 and 1/2 turkey drumsticks.