'Thanksgiving' Director Eli Roth Talks Brutal Kill Scene (Exclusive)

The Thanksgiving holiday is roughly nine months away, but there’s one big reason to give thanks right now: Thanksgiving the horror film is now streaming on Netflix.

The 2023 movie, which debuted in theaters last November, follows a group of Plymouth, Massachusetts, residents who were involved in a deadly Black Friday stampede (which is shown in great gory detail).

One year after the deadly brawl, a masked murderer, dressed up as a 17th century pilgrim, stalks the people involved, and brutally murders them one by one.

The movie stars Patrick Dempsey, Addison Rae, Nell Verlaque, Jalen Thomas Brooks and Rick Hoffman.

The victims are killed in brutal, Thanksgiving-themed ways: trussed-up like a turkey and burned alive, stabbed in the stomach with an electric knife used to carve a holiday bird, and, in one very memorable scene, stabbed in the ears with corn cob holders.

Speaking to PEOPLE late last year, director Eli Roth called the scene “a cheap gag,” but he meant it in a good way.

"I love, love, love cheap tricks. I love doing something I could have pulled off when I was 10 years old and getting away with it in a major motion picture," he explained.

To pull off the scene safely, he had actor Jenna Warren (who’s ironically known for voicing kids’ cartoons like My Little Pony) act out the sequence in reverse, and then reversing the footage for the film.

"It's so mischievous and deeply satisfying, that corn holder in the ear,” he continued.

There was some doubt that the sequence could be pulled off.

"I remember the people from the studio were like, 'We're going into overtime. What's going on? Is this going to work?'" Roth said. 

"And then finally by take six or something, we reversed it and it looked perfect and everybody screamed and we showed it to an audience and everyone jumped out of their seats," he added.

The brutal murder has “become one of the signature kills, but it was the cheapest, stupidest gag," he said. "It was so satisfying."

Despite the scary tone of the film, Roth said there was nothing but love behind the scenes. 

“We didn’t want it to end,” he said of the 35-day shoot. “We shot that riot scene in four nights, two nights outside, two nights inside, and we had the time of our lives.”

“The last night we were shooting one of the kill scenes and I went down in the green room and there were 20 actors hanging out,” he continued. “ It was like, ‘What are you guys all doing here?’ They're like, ‘We didn't want to miss the last night. We wanted to be there for the last shot.’”

Thanksgiving is now streaming on Netflix.

ncG1vNJzZmiolaS9rbGNnKamZ6Sdrq%2B30qCgr6GenHqltdGemq2nomKyrbWMq6atoF2ku26vzqulZpufl3qpu8udnKtlnaq%2FpbHRZpyxm5yqwKrCxGZvbnFpaYJz