WARNING: this article contains spoilers for Thanksgiving, all six Scream films, both My Bloody Valentines, Hospital Massacre and Friday the 13th. Basically, be familiar with your whodunit slashers before reading!
Now that its successful run in theaters is over, Eli Roth's Thanksgiving has come to Blu-ray with a bevy of bonus features. Along with the usual assortment of deleted scenes and production featurettes, there's a commentary by Roth and his co-writer/best friend Jeff Rendell, with whom he created the idea for the film back when they were horror-loving adolescents, wondering why there were no Thanksgiving horror movies (not true!) and deciding to make their own.
As expected, he chats pretty much nonstop—this is a guy who used to do MULTIPLE tracks for his films (Hostel has *four*), so giving him just the one to talk seems almost like the studio was challenging him in some way. As is often the case, he is quite effusive with praise for his behind-the-scenes collaborators and cast, points out little references (street names and businesses tend to be named after folks he wanted to give a nod to), etc. Unlike some of his peers, he clearly enjoys doing these tracks and knows how to make them entertaining.
But a couple of his revelations really stood out and, in a way, cemented why the film worked as well as it did (and again, here I will warn you about spoilers, as I'm about to identify the killer).
When the film reaches the big dinner scene near the end, where the surviving characters are tied up in chairs around a table with a human turkey as the film's villain John Carver taunts them, Roth reveals that Patrick Dempsey—at this point unrevealed as the killer—actually played Carver in the scene, despite being masked the entire time.
This is a man who was crowned "Sexiest Man Alive" the same week the movie came out (has to be a first for a slasher film's marketing potential), and in the film, it's another ten minutes or so before he is unmasked, so there was really no need for Dempsey to bother doing this when the stuntman who handled most of Carver's on-screen performance could have done it.
Now, obviously, he couldn't play the killer in every scene, as there's a reason that professional stunt persons are hired to play our beloved masked killers. With all the manhandling, scenery smashing, and general mayhem these characters commit on-screen, there's a hefty chance of someone being hurt unless they know exactly what they're doing.
Stuntpeople are trained for this sort of thing, and since they're masked anyway, it just makes perfect sense to have them don the costume for most of the character's time in front of the camera. But unfortunately, a lot of slasher films tend to find an able-bodied stunt person and use them the entire time, only putting the actor in the costume for the shot in which they are unmasked, if applicable.
This, unfortunately, creates a disconnect, making those reveals somewhat unsatisfying and rewatches even less appealing, as you can't ever really buy THAT character being the one doing all the things you saw in the previous 90 minutes. Here, it's the opposite: when you're rewatching, you can truly believe it was Dempsey's character, Eric Newlon, the whole time because sometimes it really was!
I don't think anyone was particularly blown away by the reveal that he was the killer, but it (along with his relatively sympathetic motive) gave the unveiling a weight that is often missing from these things.
And it shouldn't be that way! Personally, I feel the actors should play the killers as often as possible, as it not only enriches the film (and if they're told when they're hired that they'll be expected to wear the mask and costume, it could weed out actors who weren't committed and only there for a paycheck) but it can avoid potential "glitches."
The 1981 whodunit Hospital Massacre (aka X-Ray) has a scene where the killer chases a character who is later revealed to be the killer, something that wouldn't have been possible to shoot if everyone was on the same page.
But that's what happens when the mystery isn't tight, and you're working toward an ending that isn't set in stone. One of the great joys of the original Scream is going back and seeing all the shared little looks between Skeet Ulrich and Matthew Lillard that take on new meaning when you know they were the Ghostfaces, and that's the sort of thing a number of whodunits—including the sequels—have been robbed of ever since due to constant reworking and (needless?) secrecy.
(Side note: Thanksgiving has a similar appeal. If you're on your second viewing, please consider the gag in the film's very first shot. It's kind of genius, relatively.)
It's a shame that "It's actually them in this shot!" reveals are such a rare thing to hear when the directors (or actors themselves, on occasion) point it out in their commentaries. That's how we know it's really Skeet Ulrich playing Ghostface when he's creeping up on Randy on the couch in the original Scream, and in turn, Jack Quaid donning the outfit when the scene is reprised for Scream (2022).
If not for Roth's reveal here, we might never know that Mr. Dempsey took it upon himself to play an entire extended scene while wearing a (probably not very comfortable) mask, when only the world's most foremost experts in body language would be able to suss out that it was really him and not Alex Armbruster, the stuntman who played Carver for the majority of the time.
Likewise, in the scene where Carver prepares the human turkey by adding garnishes, basting, etc., Roth hired an actual sous chef to play the madman for the sequence, so that the way he ground the pepper and such would have the same attentive level of care in the prep work that a real chef would.
That sort of commitment on both sides of the camera is much appreciated by this slasher fan. Nothing against the stuntmen, of course, but it's clear that Roth knew that his villain could have a more memorable presence if he treated it as an actual character to perform and swapped out who was playing him in a given scene to give him more gravitas.
I can't imagine a scenario where the mystery would be spoiled, especially since most of them have a costume that conceals their exact body type, and I believe the killer's presence would be elevated (and in turn, made scarier) if it's the real actor under there.
I really like most of the Scream sequels, but I also feel that the reveals tend to fall flat more often than not, and I'd be willing to bet that it wouldn't be as much of an issue if it didn't always feel like the actor was only putting on the mask for the first time at the moment they take it off (a moment not all of them even get!).
Of course, in order to do this more often, the Scream films would have to stop blatantly cheating when it came to the height differences between Ghostface and the characters who are supposedly in that iconic costume.
During the Scream 2 commentary, Wes Craven and editor Patrick Lussier discuss the how the heights of their actors were considered during casting to make sure every suspect was within a few inches of each other for a believable reveal when Ghostface was unmasked.
Sadly, this approach didn't last throughout the series, reaching its nadir with Scream 4 and 5, in which Emma Roberts and Mikey Madison—both barely over five feet tall—were revealed as their respective films' killers, despite Ghostface always being around a foot taller than that.
Depending on how loose the script was, one could usually at least try to pass it off as "it was the other killer" (Scream 2, for example: Laurie Metcalf is a bit too short, but her only confirmed kill was Randy, where Ghostface was crouched inside the van, so we can just assume it's usually the taller Mickey), but unfortunately in Scream 5 there's no such luck.
For those who might not remember the particulars for that entry, Jack Quaid's Richie was accounted for during most of the deaths, which made his reveal a decent surprise but also meant that it had to have been Madison's Amber doing most of the work.
As a result, rewatches of that one flounder in the same way the original thrived because instead of feeling a bit silly for missing this or that telltale look or line of dialogue, you're constantly thinking, "Wait, this is supposed to be Amber?"
It's particularly silly in the scene where Dewey is killed, as Richie is himself attacked by Ghostface in the same sequence, leaving zero doubt that his much shorter partner is the one who managed to do what seven previous Ghostfaces could not, while also clearly gaining a foot in height when she delivers that fatal stab. Hell, she even lifts him up a bit! Come on!
Ditto in Scream 4; yes, Emma Roberts is terrific as Jill, but the idea that she was ever Ghostface is impossible to believe. They come off as two characters, so the unmasking moments ring false.
But I get it. He's an icon and needs to look the part, and the filmmakers can't rely on the same tricks that work for other movies of this type. They can't keep him offscreen and represent him with an arm or a leg the way the original Friday the 13th did, which allowed them to cast whoever they liked to play the roles without worrying that some pedantic FANGORIA writer would complain.
Nor can they use the trick that the original My Bloody Valentine did, chalking up the killings to a guy named Harry Warden and not even tipping their hat to the idea that one of our protagonists was under the mask; the Harry story worked just as it did for Cropsey, Madman Marz, and other mystery-free boogeymen of their day.
For the Scream sequels, we always know that there will be a new person under the mask, so we will always be trying to figure out who it is.
Long story short, Roth, Dempsey, and the rest of the Thanksgiving team had an opportunity to try something relatively unique, and I am (heh) thankful that they did, as it's the sort of thing that helped elevate the film into the upper tier of modern slashers.
And now that John Carver is scheduled to return and thus could be a Ghostface successor (especially since Scream VII is… er, having issues), I am wondering if they will be able to do the same thing next time.
Dempsey's character survived the first movie, meaning he will likely return as the killer in the next one, but I feel Roth and Rendell will want to give him a partner to allow for a surprise (unless they want to go full Freddy Krueger with him, which would be fine by me).
If Thanksgiving 2 offers a mystery angle, I hope they continue taking this thoughtful approach to casting and production, so that the actor hired for a new killer gets to have fun wearing the mask, and we can get that extra bit of assurance that the filmmakers were playing fair for all of us would-be sleuths in the crowd.
UPDATE: Ever since writing this, I’ve been worried that this was just me taking slasher movies too seriously, but today, no less than an authority on this subject—Eli Roth himself—messaged me (after sharing the piece on his socials humblebrag) to give a little extra behind the scenes info. Here's what he had to say:
"The first attack scene we shot was in the school with fake heads in the cosmetology room. That was Patrick. I wanted him to establish the language of John Carver. How he moved, stalked, slashed… we worked on all of that so the stuntmen could follow in the subsequent scenes. That first attack swinging the ax at the heads is all Patrick.” Roth adds that both he and the actor felt it “had to be him in key scenes or it wouldn’t make sense when he was revealed” and that it also drives him crazy when it doesn’t match.
So yay! I’m not too much of a dork about this stuff, after all! Or if I am, so is he, and that’s good company to be in.
