After a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy, a revenge seeking, ax-murderer, unveils horror on the town of Plymouth. As the killer commits crime, he wears a John Carver mask, one of the town’s first mayors.
The movie follows the perspective of a group of high school students, as the main character Jessica (Nell Verlaque) was the daughter of the owner of the store. On the night of the riot, Jessica, her boyfriend Bobby (Jalen Thomas Brooks) and their friend group snuck into the store after a fight with their rival school to grab Gabbys boyfriend a new phone. Ironically, the people they just fought were there, and that didn’t help with crowd control, as they noticed the stormed through the gates, and smashed into the store, killing, and severely injuring multiple people.
(Spoilers ahead)
After this opening scene, I noticed the movie could be compared to others like “Terrifier,” a comparably bloody, gruesome film. This intro got me pretty hooked as it showed the movie would at least be entertaining, and action filled.
One of the injuries suffered was Bobby, as his arm was completely snapped in half while trying to accompany someone else being murdered. Bobby was on a full-ride baseball scholarship to UCLA and this was looking career ending immediately. Bobby then disappeared, and the movie skipped in time to one year later.
Before the killer was even introduced, a main suspect could already be viewed as Bobby.
After we skip a year in time, It is back to Thanksgiving time again, we find Jessica, with her new boyfriend Ryan (Milo Manheim) with Scuba (Gabriel Davenport), Yulia (Jenna Warren), Gabby and her boyfriend. As they are eating in the local diner, they all get tagged by an unknown Instagram account titled “John Carver ” with a picture of their name on placemats, sitting around a table. As this was creepy, Jessica looked up, and noticed Bobby, walking out of the back of the store, they all noticed, and agreed it was weird.
That night, a worker of the diner, and a known attendant of the black friday riot was brutally mutilated while shutting the store down. She was strung by a sign, yet her head was kept, and used for another instagram post that again tagged the teens.
Now, it was starting to get creepy, I was starting to get hooked into what would happen next, and who the possible killer could be. Horror fans had been waiting years for a Thanksgiving-themed adventure, and this was looking like it could be it.
This horrifying start is everything a fan needs to be excited. After another terrible murder, with a Instagram post to tag along, we now have realized that the killer’s motive was people at the riot, with a final goal to grab the teens at the end.
After leaving the police station, Jessica then officially runs into Bobby, following their awkward run in, he apologizes, and admits to her that he blamed her for everything that had happened to him, they made up, and from that point on that they were still friends, and he would help her.
Next we found out that the rival schools football coach, and head cheerleader were murdered, canceling the two schools football meeting. This is when the killer swooped up Gabby, and her boyfriend, but didn’t murder them, instead sat them around a table.
While having everyone horrified, the killer then targeted Yulia, who planned to leave town, and instead of kidnapping her, brutally murdered her with a horrific scene while she was on facetime with Scuba. Infuriated, Scuba and Jess then went to get a gun, in hopes to take down the murderer for good. Now the movie was getting even better, on the edge of our seat, no viewer knew what was coming next, but the killer escaped, leaving just Jess, and a mourning Scuba to try and save their remaining friends.
The killer somehow managed to not only get Jess, and Scuba in his grasp, but Jess’s stepmom, Dad, and placed them all around a table. Jess still had a tiny needle, and managed to cut her, and Scuba free to try and escape and fight the killer. Scuba was hit hard, but not killed, in a distraction that helped Jess escape. She ran all the way to the police station, where she found the head Sheriff Newlon (Patrick Dempsy) attacked, and bleeding, she takes his gun but then he wakes up, screaming “It’s Bobby” In exclamation.
Personally, at this point I felt it was too obvious to be Bobby. Then, they went into Newlons office, where Jess noticed stickers from the forest on his boot, revealing that the Sheriff was the notorious murderer. This was absolutely unexpected, and unpredictable, no audience member could have linked the two together, and how they were in the same place at different times, but it was him. Smartly, Jess began recording on instagram live, giving the whole world a view of what he had done, he was caught, and with Bobby in the building, he came to Jess’s rescue before Newlon could kill her, and they escaped, but not easily, Newlon made it as hard as possible before Jess, being a genius, lit the blowup turkey on fire, exploding him, and ending his chances of hurting anyone else. ‘
At the end, I was feeling mixed emotions, this movie was a crazy showing of different things, the suspense and mystery behind the horrible crimes of a usual crime-free town. Overall, I enjoyed it, but some parts were corny, and It could have definitely been better. 4/5
