Eli Roth's seasonal slasher Thanksgiving has made a bloody splash on Netflix's viewership charts, entering the US top 10 upon being added. Inspired by the director's contribution to Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's 2007 movie Grindhouse, the horror movie focuses on a sleepy Massachusetts town that is plagued by a masked pilgrim-costumed killer during the titular holiday.
Roth's holiday feature was a critical and financial success upon its release, earning praise in reviews and grossing $46.5 million from a $15 million budget, with Thanksgiving 2 being greenlit in November 2023.
Now, Thanksgiving has left Netflix viewers revisiting the 2023 horror movie upon it being added to the streaming service in the United States. During its debut week of February 12 to February 18, the horror movie firmly solidified its presence by taking ninth place on Netflix's US Top 10 chart. While additional statistics and viewership numbers were not provided, Thanksgiving surpassed Illumination's animated family comedy, Minions, pushing it to tenth place despite having spent six weeks on the chart.
Thanksgiving was just one part of several strong horror features to horrify and charm audiences in 2023. While the holiday-themed feature fittingly saw success across the latter half of the year, the year of horror was ushered in by the surprising viral success of Blumhouse's M3GAN. Returning franchises also made an impact, such as Scream VI, Evil Dead Rise, and Saw X. Alongside the success of A24 and YouTube duo RackaRacka's directional debut Talk To Me and Brandon Cronenberg's visceral psychological terror Infinity Pool, horror audiences weren't short of choice in 2023.
Although a sequel has been greenlit, audiences will have to wait until 2025 to see what Roth has in mind for it. Thanksgiving's fiery final act left the assumption that its John Carver-masked killer was still on the loose despite being horrifically burned, with no dead body being found at the scene and Nell Verlaque's Jessica being plagued by nightmares of the killer taking his revenge. While the ending employs many familiar tropes in the slasher subgenre, few details hint at what Roth has planned for the sequel.
While Thanksgiving's holiday ties and November release no doubt helped it tap into a morbid side of the season for a successful theatrical run, it is clear that the feature managed to strike a note with audiences. Its February Netflix performance shows that audiences who missed it were keen to give it a chance, or returning viewers were eager to rewatch it when it became available. As such, Thanksgiving's Netflix performance is a positive sign that viewers will come back for seconds in 2025.
Thanksgiving is available on Netflix and through a physical release on Blu-ray and DVD.
Originally conceived as a parody trailer in 2007's Grindhouse, Thanksgiving is a 2023 horror-slasher film from director Eli Roth. The movie centers around a serial killer who heads to a small town in Massachusetts that creates a huge event out of Thanksgiving each year with the intent of turning the residents into the main course.
