ThanksKilling

ThanksKilling
2009
Directed By Jordan Downey



SYNOPSIS

5 college students head home to their small town for Thanksgiving break. A homicidal, trash-talking turkey, who appears every 505 years, targets the group and makes their lives a living hell.



MY THOUGHTS

With a premise like that, you should clearly expect a budget of $100 million and tons of A-list talent fighting each other for the roles.

OK, so that's not the case. You can pick all the change out of your pocket, subtract 50 cents and that's the budget here. Also, fill the screen with people who clearly have never acted before, and a cliche-ridden script and you have a recipe for disaster.

But sometimes despite all those factors, something genius can still be created.

The amazingly absurd script left me choking with laughter at several occasions.
After killing one of the girl's father, the turkey clearly has ripped off the man's face and is wearing it as a mask. When the girl arrives home, she doesn't even realize her tall father is now the size of a turkey (and has feathers) and treats him as she normally would. She introduces her friends to him and no one acts the wiser.
It's too absurd to be believable, but then again a talking axe-and-shotgun-wielding turkey is also somewhat unbelievable.
ThanksKilling is like the most demented Looney Tunes cartoon with a serious drug habit.

The humor is ever further out there than many of the great cheesy b-horror comedies of the 1980's and 90's like Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Leprechaun, or the Ghoulies films. ThanksKilling adds those film's cheesy campy humor with its absurd mix of silliness to create something unique and WAY over the top.

The turkey is clearly a puppet (see the poster above,) as articulate as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, with an even filthier mouth. He isn't as funny as Triumph, but more sadistic and offers many laughs. The sex scene between the turkey and one of the girls is priceless.

The main five characters are heavily stereotyped in the Breakfast Club style. The jock, the fat hick, the nerd, the skank, and the girl next door type. The characters remain broad caricatures throughout the film, so it's hard to feel for them, yet they feel little anyway. Most of their families are killed, but they show little emotion towards them. That's most likely a result of the script and not the performances, which are uniformly bad, but fit in perfectly with the overall goofiness of the film.

For such an obvious low budget, the gore makeup is surprisingly excellent and could possibly turn the stomach of some viewers.

If you're looking for genuine scares or astonishingly deep performances from accomplished actors, please look elsewhere. This is the complete opposite. This is clearly made for fans of so-bad-it's-good horror films... and is brilliant despite its flaws.