At The Movies: Thanksgiving serves up a grisly feast, The Marsh King’s Daughter squanders potential

Thanksgiving (R21)

105 minutes, opens on Nov 30
3 stars

The story: A vengeful axe murderer is terrorising Plymouth, Massachusetts – the birthplace of American Thanksgiving – a year after a Black Friday stampede at a local megastore left shoppers dead. It is not only turkeys that will be carved.

Is no holiday safe any more?

Thanksgiving is American writer-director Eli Roth’s throwback to the 1980s teen slasher horror hallmarks Halloween (1978), Black Christmas (1974) and My Bloody Valentine (1981).

It began as a jokey fake trailer he created to run between Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s 2007 Grindhouse double bill.

And it is still very much a comedy raucous with sadistic wit and R-rated viscera in its myriad creative kills. The townsfolk are impaled, decapitated, sliced, basted and roasted because what is Thanksgiving without a meaty feast?

Patrick Dempsey may be People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive in 2023 but, as the sheriff, he is useless at catching the killer.

Who is this mysterious assailant in a pilgrim costume and the mask of 17th-century Plymouth Colony founder John Carver?

For reasons yet unknown, he is targeting the rioters and survivors of that fateful night, and the main potential victims are heroine Jessica (Nell Verlaque), daughter of the moneybags store owner (Rick Hoffman), and her high-school circle of jocks and blondes (including TikTok star Addison Rae).

Their Black Friday melee is the unsurpassed opening act, an extended tension-builder that erupts in the bargain hunters storming the building.

The killer could well be retribution for the community’s unchecked consumerism and seasonal gluttony, but let’s not overthink. Roth, the peddler of torture porn Cabin Fever (2002) and Hostel (2005), is not suddenly trading in metaphors. His gorefest is simply bloody good fun.

Hot take: This festive special is grisly laughs done just right.

The Marsh King’s Daughter (NC16)

108 minutes, opens on Nov 30
2 stars

The story: Helena (Daisy Ridley) is the product of an abduction: the father is Jacob “the Marsh King” Holbrook (Ben Mendelsohn) and the mother is his captive (Caren Pistorius). She grows up isolated in the Michigan marshlands in the United States until Jacob is arrested. Twenty years later, he escapes, and she must kill him before he harms her husband (Garrett Hedlund) and daughter (Joey Carson).

The Marsh King’s Daughter is a psychological thriller adaptation of Karen Dionne’s 2017 bestseller.

British actress Ridley is a strong central presence with her quiet intensity and determined jaw. Also memorable is Brooklynn Prince, who plays her tween counterpart.

Director Neil Burger (Divergent, 2014), in a bit of feint, presents the prologue through young Helena’s eyes such that her childhood in the wild appears to be a sun-dappled idyll of learning survivalist tips from her father, whom she idolises.

The reveal that he is a monster, therefore, comes as a shock.

She remains emotionally conflicted in her confusion, rage, dread and, yes, her love too, even after he resurfaces to again pose a danger. She will never be free of Jacob’s grip.

The movie could have been a meaningful study of trauma.

Instead, it gives in to the mechanics of a cat-and-mouse pursuit once Helena returns to the wetlands where the father-daughter bond was formed to hunt him down using the very hunting skills he had taught her.

Their final confrontation is a star war, if you will. Mendelsohn, who was power-mad Director Krennic in the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) instalment of the Star Wars franchise featuring Ridley as heroine Rey, makes Jacob a manipulative antagonist capable as much of tenderness as savagery, but his motives and mindset are never explained.

Hot take: Lost inside the stock action thrills is a promising story about toxic family ties with two good actors.