Thankskilling – 2009

Tonight marks the inaugural entry for “Terrible Movies for Terrible People” and as such, I’d like to start this blog by showing you the movie that inspired me to do this in the first place.  Imagine, a movie so bad, you suddenly think “Oh god, the people have to know.”

Turkie knows your secrets.

We must warn them.”

This movie’s budget was $3500, and it shows. This movie has a very “college film project” feel to it in almost every aspect.  Not bad, per se, just amateur.
When the movie starts, the first thing you see is a breast. The left one, if it matters. So far, so good, right? The camera zooms out and you see that this particular pair of sweater-puppies belongs to a topless pilgrim. There is no reason or story as to why this pilgrim is topless. According to the director, they had a whole scene planned that explained this, but cut it due to budget and filming schedule concerns. After a brief chase scene, we are introduced to the antagonist of the film, Turkie, with a sincere “Nice tits, bitch” and then murdering her with a hatchet. Cut to intro credits.

One thing you’ll come to notice is that this movie absolutely loves close-ups. I’m serious. The majority of this movie is 3/4 of the screen filled with some pasty white person’s face. PROTIP: “This movie is filled with pasty white people.”

I will say this, the intro credits are very professionally done. They are 3D rendered and animated to look like slices with blood around them. I want you to think really hard about how bad this movie has to be for me to think “Damn those are some nice credits.”

After the intro credits are done, we are introduced to a group of characters that looks like it was pulled straight out of an episode of “Dawson’s Creek”. Just imagine Dawson and Joey were slightly inbred and Pacey was dropped on his head a few times as a child. Don’t ask me how I know their names, that’s not important. I’ve seen terrible things you don’t even know. Don’t judge me.

All of them, horrible people.
Johnny: Johnny is the stereotypical jock and leader of the group. His specialties are flexing, speaking into an empty space next to the person he’s supposed to be talking to, and under/overacting at the same time. (*monotone, emotionless* “oh no my family is dead *screaming* I’M GOING TO KILL YOU TURKEY“)

Kristen: The “nice girl” of the group. The innocent Sherriff’s daughter who is not-so-secretly in love with Johnny. Has a very classy sense of humor, “Your legs are harder to shut than the Jon Benet Ramsey case.” She repeats this joke twice in the movie, and each time the characters laugh like it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard.

Allison: Her legs are harder to shut than the Jon Benet Ramsey case. This is the skank of the group. (This actress doesn’t smile so much as she bares her teeth. Every time she attempts a smile, she looks like she’s trying to scare away a predator.)  Allison reminds me of a dirty Snooki.  I want you to let that thought sink in.

Billy: A fat, stereotypical redneck type. He’s the “lovable goof”, and always does this “making fun of you in a loving way” thing. This Thanksgiving, he’s “thankful that your mom has the juiciest poon in town.”

Darren: Nerd, shirt always tucked in, glasses, terrible with women. Imagine me from high school, but skinnier. Displays vaguely homoerotic tendencies. Darren, not me from high school. Damnit.  (The actor who plays Darren is actually a really cool dude.)

The plot is simple. Years ago, a “powerful Indian chief” decided to necromance a demon turkey so he could put the beat down on a whole bunch of white people. The turkey has been dormant for 505 years, but once peed on by a random dog, wakes up and decides he hasn’t killed any white people recently, why not start now?

Although funny, sometimes the humor in this movie wears on you a bit. Remember, the first thing you see is a boob, then some gay/wiener jokes, a fart joke, a poop joke, another wiener joke, a skank joke, another poop joke. You see where I’m going with this. At one point, a man sits down to drink a cup of coffee, spits it out and yells “Goddamn Cheryl, this coffee tastes like shit? What’d you do, take a dump in it?” To which his wife replies, “As a matter of fact, I DID” and holds up a coffee pot with a large poo floating on top.  To be fair, while completely juvenile, this was easily one of the funniest parts of the movie.

Once resurrected, Turkey goes on a murderous rampage, killing the parents of our main characters, then the main characters themselves, starting with Allison. Turkey comes upon slightly cracked door and opens it to find Allison taking it from behind literally from some random guy. It’s the only scene this guy is in. I think he’s credited as “Guy that bones Allison.” Turkey turns to the camera, winks, and heads into the room. Turkey then sneaks up behind “Guy that bones Allison” and stabs him in the back, dumping his body off to the side. Allison makes some comment about “God, are you done already?”, only to have Turkey pick up where “Guy” left off. After a brief period of the most awkward grunts and “OH GOD YES“, Turkey… “finishes”. Allison turns around, realizes what just happened, and screams.

Turkey looks her dead in the eye, says “YOU JUST GOT STUFFED” and snaps her neck.

At this point I had to pause the movie because seriously oh my god.

Our heroes start getting pissed and try to figure out a way to kill Turkey. They try to go to the library, but it’s closed. So they go to the Sherriff’s house, because “he’s got a lot of books about turkeys, maybe one of them is about demon turkeys.”

The two best scenes in the movie IMHO occur in the Sherriff’s house.

What is this I don't even?
It starts with the Turkey murdering the Sherriff and then cutting off his face and wearing it, Hannibal Lector style. The kids come home and talk to the Sherriff Masked Turkey for a few minutes, with Kristen even giving him a hug before leaving to go book hunting.

The second scene is a solid 5 minute “Book Reading Montage”. Literally nothing but terrible 80’s music playing while 4 kids read through books.

Shortly after, the jig is up, Turkey is discovered.Turkey: “You kids are retarded.”
Darren: “What did you do to the Sherriff?”
Turkey: “Shut up faggot, I do the talking.”

Excellent.

Turkey murders the fat kid and escapes. At this point Darren has some kind of break down and admits he loved Billy all along. He cries while a man sings “Dead Best Friend” with soft piano playing in the background.

Armed with knowledge on how to kill Turkey, our heroes set out to finish the job they started. They confront him in his tee-pee and let him know what’s going down.

Darren: “You’re in for it now Turkey, I’ve got something you don’t have.”
Turkey: “What’s that? A vagina?”
Darren: “FUCK YOU TURKEY!!”

The turkey escapes yet again, but this time, he is met by a crazed hobo outside of the tee-pee and unceremoniously shot in the face with a rifle. They throw his body in a dumpster and go back to the Sherriff’s house to watch movies.

Congratulations! The movie is over, right? You wish.

No, it turns out the dumpster was filled with radioactive waste, and now Turkey has come back to life as a demon, zombie turkey! He manages to kill Johnny right before being set on fire and burned alive.

While the turkey burns alive, screaming, “OH SHIT MY FEATHERS ARE FUCKING MELTING OH GOD!!”, a fully breaded KFC chicken leg magically bounces out of the fire and into Kristen’s hand, so she does the obvious thing and takes a nice bite.

Fade to black, fade in on a family sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner. The camera kind of pans around the room while the family joins hands and says their prayer. After a few minutes of “bless us father for we have turkey”, the camera zooms in on a fully cooked, wiggling turkey. OH GOD it jumps up on the table and screams “Do I smell sequel? BEEYOOOOOOOOTCH!!!” and jumps at the camera. End Credits.

Oh thank god, end credits, yes.

Final Thoughts:

This movie was painful to watch at times.  The actors either underacted (monotone “oh no my family is dead“) or overacted (screaming “FUCK YOU TURKEY!!!”). The only believable characters the entire movie were the Sherriff and the woman who shit in his coffee. The entire movie takes place in either the woods or the actor’s actual houses. There’s a good chance the actors were paid in food stamps.

However, that being said, it was a blast.  Several times during the movie we had to pause so we could catch our breath from laughing so much.  They didn’t have a lot of resources to make a movie, but that didn’t stop them.  I’m very excited about the sequel they’re currently filming.

This movie is available on Netflix Instant Play and you owe it to yourself to watch (suffer through) it.

Disclaimer: This review has been modified from it’s original posting because when I first started this blog I thought the best way to review a movie was to make fun of it.  This is not the case.  This review is still terrible, just, slightly less so.  ThanksKilling was actually fun to watch and deserves at least a rental.

Showing 1 comments
  • Anonymous

    The movie is suppose to be overacted underacted bad jokes and such look at poultrygeist it was great, in my opinion better than this, i also loved the turkey great voice acting, i'm saying the movie is self aware of it's bad jokes,acting and the like so i enjoyed it more because of that.

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