ThamksKilling (2008)
When a movie begins with a title card reading “In olden times,” you know you’re in for it. Immediately, there’s a topless pilgrim woman just running through the woods, and she’s attacked by a hand-puppet turkey with a voice like Rocket Raccoon that tells her “Hey bitch, nice tits.” This will prove to be the best part of the movie. Also, the woman playing the topless pilgrim – named Wanda Lust – is the top-billed actress in the film despite this being her only scene. Must be that star-power she’s packing from such well-known titles as “Bust a Nut 5” and “Cock Smocking Grannies!” (No, it’s just the cast is in order of appearance, but what a convenient coincidence!)
From here we land in present day where an odd assortment of high school acquaintances – or maybe college age? — I’m not sure because one dude looks at least 30 – are taking off together for a Thanksgiving Break, sharing a ride offered by second-string Quarterback Johnny. Real quick, you get the following:
1.) Kristen- the sweet, innocent, girl-next-door who likes Johnny
2.) Ali – the promiscuous girl who flashes her bra at the guys literally seconds after being introduced. (Hilariously, actress Natasha Cordova is second-billed despite not being the female lead.)
3.) Billy – a big, dumb buffoon of a guy who seems nice enough when he’s not being a dick
4.) Darren – the nerdy guy who keeps wiping his mouth with his hand and, as I said, looks – at youngest – 30 years old.
The crew end up stranded when Johnny’s jeep craps out, and soon discover they’re in “Crawberg,” an old township that’s infamous – at least according to Darren – for the most ridiculous legend this side of a republican health care plan. Apparently a Native American Shaman sought revenge on a specific pilgrim named Chuck Langston. Yes. A pilgrim named Chuck. What’s more, somehow one of the kids in the group – Billy – is a direct descendent and once every 505 years, the Shaman reanimates himself as a foul-mouthed (get it?) turkey that kills white people.
Alas, it hasn’t quite been that long since “the olden days” so Darren tells them there’s nothing to worry about. Of course, that’s before a dog urinates on a miniature totem pole and – like Nightmare on Elm Street 3 – evil is roused by canine piss.
Sure enough, Turkie (spelled Turkie, apparently) is talking smack and murdering whoever he comes across, including Kristen’s father – a small-town sheriff who would have made out bottom five moustaches lists. What’s more, seeking refuge from Turkie later in the movie, the kids go to Kristen’s dad’s house and encounter Turkie wearing her father’s face as a mask… and they don’t notice. In fact, she even hugs and kisses him, acting completely oblivious to the fact it’s Turkie and not, you know, the dad who would stand at least 3 feet taller and isn’t, you know, a fucking turkey.
It’s all knowingly dumb, and the fact these kids are aware they’re making something painfully, outrageously absurd and stupid is the only thing that makes this watchable. Nothing is taken seriously, and in fact, the less seriously things are taken, the more watchable the film is. For instance, there’s a montage sequence where the characters search for a sacred text that will explain how to kill Turkie. After they find it, Darren says “Finally, we’ve found it” and Ali says quickly “that was 5 minutes.” It’s a good line, and were most of the movie like this, it’d be ok because the absurdity works.
Usually.
When Turkie disrupts Ali and her boyfriend doing it like they do on the Discovery Channel – fully clothed by the way – he kills the guy and then takes over from behind, yelling – after coming like an actor in Bust a Nut 5 – “You just got stuffed!”
As one would expect from a movie made for $3,500 – yes, that’s right, this was made with 35 $100 bills – the acting, camerawork, editing and, especially the story, are all positively terrible. Even for me, a guy who made movies in this budget range – and even with my copious amount of forgiveness – this was painful to watch. This movie is 66 minutes long and it took me three separate sittings to get to the end credits.
At random, the film wildly veers off course – like the insane “Best Friend Billy” montage that takes place when Darren watches Billy die after he is gutted by Turkie. Or when Turkie is tracked down in a random teepee by the side of a road while he’s literally tossing a salad.
I think the biggest issue is just how agonizingly lazy it all is. When something is shot as a Goddamn goof, it’s pretty tough to give it any time because no time or effort feels like it’s spent on it. The actors often appear bored or clueless, playing characters written as if they know they’re archetypes in a dumb horror movie and who always explain why they are where they are and why they are feeling what they feel.
I used to make improvised short films with a group of friends in my early to mid 20’s, and they were not good by any stretch of the imagination, often feeling like Thankskilling. There was, however, a certain joy in creating the movies and that sometimes made the films feel tolerable. At times, it appears the filmmakers here are having a good time. But the rigor of making a feature-length film about a killer turkey seems to wear them down so that, even at 66 minutes, things drag and feel pointless.
If there’s anything to commend here, it’s probably the voice of Turkie – who apparently was voiced by director Jordan Downey. He says nothing but awful lines, but there’s enough personality and humorous ad-libbing here that you’re usually happy to see the stupid puppet onscreen.
Interestingly, writer-director Jordan Downey is moving up in the film world, having directed the most-recent “Critters” sequel and one of the shorts in this year’s edition of the V/H/S anthology series “V/H/S Beyond” working alongside actor Justin Long who helmed one of the 6 segments. And co-writer and cinematographer Kevin Steward, when not shooting Downey’s movies, has worked on some higher-profile stuff including the Unfriended sequel, “Unfriended: Dark Web.”
Incidentally, there is a sequel to Thankskilling – Thankskilling 3! There is no Thankskilling 2 and I feel like we’re all the better for it.
Bottom Five High-Concept Films
5.) A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Dir. Stanley Kubrick
High concept: Make the audience care about a horrifically vile protagonist.
There are several high-concepts at work in this allegedly classic film from director Stanley Kubrick. There’s how little value is held by an authoritarian government for the good for an individual or even society – something we’re going to be learning more and more over the next four years. There’s also this entire idea about reforming problematic individuals versus reprogramming them. But the high concept I most think comes out of Kubrick’s controversial adaptation of the controversial Anthony Burgess novel, and it’s a doozy, is the idea of creating a reprehensible protagonist for the story and then forcing the audience to sympathize with him.
That’s a hell of an experiment, and one very much in line with Kubrick’s frequent desire to involve the viewer as an active participant in the story he is telling, but in this film everything is just so fucking theatrical, nonsensical, heinously violent, boring and riddled with plot convenience, that by the end of it, you’re exhausted, confused and, in my case, fed up with the pretension of the whole endeavor, which seems so over pleased with itself. It wants to condemn violence, but by turning everything into nearly black comedy, it robs the violence and the consequences of Alex’s actions of any weight. So what you end up with is a bunch of people talking in seemingly endless, beautifully framed shots about all sorts of big ideas and none of it seems to mean a damn thing. It’s a ponderous, occasionally upsetting bore, and it fails to make me sympathize with Alex because it doesn’t care about what he did or who he is anymore than the authoritarian government that’s trying to correct him.
4.) Terminator: Genisys (2015)
dir. Alan Taylor (The Many Saints of Newark as well as plenty of good shows including Deadwood, Big Love, The Sopranos, Nurse Jackie and Game of Thrones.)
High concept: Terminator, but within the multiverse
Let’s reboot the already challenging time-travel-saturated world of The Terminator by introducing a multiverse angle, reenacting several scenes of the original terminator with different actors – how dare you replace Bill Paxton – and then, in a fit of truly nonsensical audacity, make John Connor, savior of humanity… the bad guy?
Of course, they didn’t just replace Bill Paxton! They replace the entire lead cast – Reese, Sarah, Johnm – now they’re different actors who – try as they might cannot match the memorable, near icon status of the original performers. Well, except for John. Because thank God they didn’t bring back either Ed Furlong or Nick Stahl.
It’s too much of a plot-pretzel to make sense, and the story crashes and burns so spectacularly that an entire trilogy and a TV spin-off of multiverse Terminator stories collapses under the weight of Genisys’s Failure.
3.) Ghost Ship
Dir. Steve Beck (oh he of 13 Ghosts. Yes?)
High concept: A derelict cruise ship is found years after it is lost and it’s haunted by a boatload of ghosts!
A two-word high-concept and a positively shocking, horrifying cold open and then… boring, pedestrian scares. Somehow a post-ER Juliana Marguiles, a post-The Usual Suspects Gabriel Byre, a post Isaiah Washington, and a post-Xena/Hercules Karl Urban signed on for this mess out on the high seas. This one isn’t so much a bad idea – I like the premise of a derelict ship lost at sea – and the absolutely game-changer of a cold open, which has been indelibly imprinted in my mind since I saw it twenty years ago is probably one of the most memorable scenes I’ve ever witnessed in a theater. But then… the rest is just so very boring. It’s an old “and then there were none” played out in a conventionally creepy haunted set and while I’m beyond thankful for the appearance of a nude Francesca Rettondini, who may be in the top three most gorgeous women to have ever graced the silver screen, one magnificent Italian actress cannot a movie make – I’m looking at you, Matrix Revolutions.
There was probably no way for Ghost Ship to do anything as sophisticated, surprising or horrifying as the opening scene, so it’s entirely possible that it’s a disappointment for shooting it’s shot way too soon – the equivalent of cinematic premature ejaculation. But with a cast as good as this one, it could have been a high-seas surprise, like the Treat Williams-starring Deep Rising instead of being a mid-level ghosty-story with way too many bad visual effects, a la Jan De Bont’s “The Haunting.” And that’s simply too bad, because were this thing able to go the distance, we could have had a classic on our hands.
2.) Space Jam or Space Jam: A New Legacy
dir. Joe Pytka (Space Jam), Malcolm D. Lee
High Concept: NBA super-star Michael Jordan plays basketball with the Looney Toons. NBA Superstar LeBron James has to play basketball with the Looney Toons to save his son.
What Bugs Bunny has to do with basketball, I’ll never ever understand. And yet, somehow, two mega-huge-budgeted flicks featuring a combination of live action and animation are about NBA superstars having to play basketball with the likes of Wile E. Coyote, Daffy Duck and Lola Bunny – who, as you may remember – caused an uproar because her outfit wasn’t as skimpy in the second movie as the first one. Can you imagine outing yourself as that level of incel? Like somehow your pent-up sexual frustrations run SOOO deep that you care how high-cut a cartoon character’s shirt is? Sometimes I wonder if this world is worth living in.
Anyhow, these movies are both entertaining and absolutely awful. I adore the Looney Toons – I was always more of a Warner Brothers guy than a Disney fan, but like, the excessive IP parade happening in these movies – especially “A New Legacy” is so frightfully commercial, it’s as though the filmmakers confused fan service with fan pampering. When The Shining twins and Neo and Trinity from The Matrix showed up as spectators in “A New Legacy,” I was almost as pulled out of the flick as when Bill Murray joined the team in the original Space Jam. It’s cute, sure, but it’s also manipulation of an audience’s adoration of superstars and characters that, by proxy, will somehow elevate this completely braindead premise about a high-stakes basketball game played by… cartoons… and featuring the best players the game has ever seen… who cannot, CAN NOT, act. Like, at all. It’s no wonder that the first Space Jam was directed by a guy known mostly for Pepsi commercials while the second was by the guy who brought us “Scary Movie V” and “Barbershop: The Next Cut.”
1.) Movie 43 (2013)
Directed by: Too many to name, but it includes Elizabeth Banks, Griffin Dunne, Brett Ratner and Peter Farrelly, but it’s essentially the fault of a producer name Charles B. Wessler who has almost exclusively worked on Peter Farrelly movies. But also? He’s the sole credited producer on “It’s Pat.”
High concept: It’s about a filmmaker trying to sell high-concept film ideas.
A movie where the terrible hi-concept is… that it is a movie about terrible high concepts. Stars such Emma Stone, Dennis Quaid, Liev Shreiber, High Kaclman and Kate Winslet, were basically badgered, guilted and beaten down to star in this turd. Richard Gere has actually tried to disown his involvement completely.
The short films of this anthology are held together by a wraparound segment starring Dennis Quaid, who plays a fictional version of producer Charles Wessler as a screenwriter, pulls a gun on a movie producer played by Greg Kinnear while pitching stories. Common shows up as the producer’s manager, people get shot and it’s revealed a camera crew was filming the whole time.
Incidentally, yes, this is the movie in which Hugh Jackman goes on a date with Kate Winslet and reveals he wears a scarf because he has a pair of testicals growing out of his neck.
Fun fact, two years after this abomination hit cinemas, producer Charles B. Wessler would stand on stage at the 91st Academy Awards when the film Green Book, which he produced won the Best Picture Oscar.