John Carver’s Top 5 Kills in Thanksgiving (2023)

After Halloween, it seems that Christmas has the most horror films under its belt. That doesn’t mean other holidays haven’t taken a stab at closing the gap. St. Patrick’s Day, New Year’s Eve, and even Valentine’s Day have a few cult classics to their names — but Thanksgiving has lately been carving a path of slaughter towards recognition and fear, with films like Thankskilling, Black Friday, Pilgrim, and more.

But Eli Roth’s recent slasher, simply titled Thanksgiving, has all the fixings (and main course) of a hit franchise that will be celebrated for years to come. And it is actually the third film to be created based on a trailer featured in Rodriguez’s/Tarantino’s Grindhouse (behind Machete and Hobo with a Shotgun).

Consumer greed, senseless violence, unquestioned tradition — the film’s killer takes exception to the frenzied culture of the Thanksgiving season that leads to tragedy in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Called “John Carver” because of the stylized pilgrim mask he wears for anonymity, the killer exacts his revenge on a town full of people involved in a Black Friday sales stampede.

Not every death in the movie is John Carver’s doing, but his kills range from straightforward slasher terror to thematic horror befitting the holiday — there are an abundance of carving knives out at Thanksgiving, after all. Here are the top five most stomach-churning murders we see on the screen.

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5. Evan Fletcher — Bludgeoned with a Meat Tenderizer

One of the film’s final kills is also one of the most straightforward. Still, that doesn’t diminish the sickening nature of the act. Having captured his remaining victims-to-be, John Carver arranges them around a horrifying Thanksgiving feast (but more on that later). With the element of social media on his side, he livestreams the scene at his hideout as he plans to make an example out of the hostages for their greed.

Evan Fletcher, the posturing jock whose idea to sneak into RightMart incited most of the crowd’s anger and violence, is chosen to be killed live on screen for the viewers at home. His skull is repeatedly caved in with a meat tenderizer right at the table, left for John Carver’s other victims to stare at while the Instagram live video keeps playing.

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4. Lizzie McMullen — Cut in Half by a Dumpster

Lizzie McMullen, a local waitress at a cafe giving out the John Carver masks, is John Carver’s first notable kill in the film. But it wasn’t the first death overall. Notably, Lizzie was part of the crowd at the RightMart stampede, and her actions and greed directly contribute to the death of another woman named Amanda Collins, whose head was bashed and scalped by a shopping cart’s wheels.

John Carver exacts his revenge on Lizzie late one night when she’s leaving her diner job. A fraught and adrenaline-packed chase sequence, this kill sets the tone for the killer’s elaborate, gory plans. After having her head slammed into the walk-in freezer door, the waitress is forced to pry her face off the cold metal, leaving chunks of skin behind. Just as Lizzie tries to flee by climbing into a dumpster, John Carver drives her car into the bin, causing the slamming lid to cut her body in half — her legs are left on top of RightMart’s sign as a bloody example of those contemplating those tempting 50% off deals…

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3. Amy — Stabbed Through a Trampoline

Okay… technically, we do see Amy “alive” after her supposed death scene, but she’s locked in a fridge, nearly catatonic, and wrapped in plastic likely to asphyxiate her. She has a death rattle gasp as a part of Kathleen’s big chase, and then John Carver definitively stabs her in the neck with a corkscrew at the dinner table. But the trampoline scene is what we’re here to discuss. This kill was teased in both this film’s trailers and the original short that inspired the feature length project.

Amy is a cheerleader from Jennifer’s school who was also involved in the Black Friday stampede, even if she’s not part of the core friend group. Her death comes from below, as John Carver stabs her repeatedly from beneath a trampoline. As she is jumping to practice a routine, she lands hard on the knife’s blade, unable to stop her momentum. The result is horrific, and may give you a new fear you never thought to have before! The trampoline’s springy surface rebounds her onto the knife several times before she is seen slowly succumbing to the blood loss. (Until the fridge thing. And the blood goblet. No leftovers!)

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2. Yulia — Disembowled on a Table Saw

Thanksgiving loves to play with its food — plenty of fakeouts and dramatic scene dressings add to the paranoia and fear as each character is confronted by the menacing John Carver. Yulia’s expansive house is decked out for remodeling, leaving plastic tarps and table saws all around. Hey, who invited Chekov to dinner? You just know things are going to go wrong here. House renovations are already horrifying enough.

Yulia wasn’t one of the meanest teens in the friend group, though the company she keeps is enough to damn her all the same. John Carver first stabs her in the ears with corn holders before holding her hostage to draw her friends into the home. All the while, he’s got other friends of theirs already kidnapped and held captive in his hideout. Making his escape, he throws Yulia onto one of the table saws set up around the home, which slices her fingers, then her arm, and then as she can’t support herself any longer, she falls impaled on the blade until her stomach is sliced to ribbons.

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1. Kathleen Wright — Impaled and Cooked Alive

This film wasn’t going to get through its runtime without one person trussed up as a turkey. It’s an Eli Roth joint, after all. Even if viewers wanted to believe that Kathleen Wright might actually outsmart John Carver in his hideout, it’s not hard to recognize that her proverbial goose is cooked from the get-go. As the somewhat shallow stepmother of the protagonist, Kathleen’s death is one of the film’s most horrifying, as she’s impaled with a pitchfork and forced into a giant oven.

Her sizzling flesh and sounds of pain are visceral, inducing instant terror in anyone who’s even bumped a knuckle on the top side of a heated oven. It’s a long, drawn-out kill as well, as those who’ve been in charge of cooking the turkey will know. The John Carver killer even gets a visual upgrade, resting his plastic mask near enough to the heat to char it for a cool “final act” look that upgrades him from a simply smiling pilgrim to a frightening, scarred figure. Of course, Eli Roth ends the kill with a basting of dark comedy, involving a well-timed meat thermometer going off at the end of the scene.

Kathleen’s crisped corpse is then later served to the hostages in Carver’s hideout during Thanksgiving‘s climax. Anyone hungry?

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Coming Back for Seconds

With a sequel already in the works for 2025, it’s likely that Thanksgiving is a horror franchise with legs (and drumsticks, and thighs). After all, we can’t be sure that John Carver died at the end of the film or that someone else won’t take up the frightening mask.

Have you already seen Thanksgiving, or will you be adding it to your list of new holiday traditions this year? Share your thoughts with other horror fans over at Sideshow Social Network or in side.show/geekgroup, and don’t forget to Let Your Geek Sideshow!