Thankskilling 3 ~ 2012, Jordan Downey
Thankskilling was a movie wherein a group of young people found themselves repeatedly menaced by a murderous, talking turkey, who would kill them one by one until finally being defeated by a lone survivor. It was not good. What we didn’t know at the time, however, was that Thankskilling was also a very real, very high stakes example of the phenomena outlined in cherished children’s book; If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. When people enthusiastically jumped at the chance to watch a turkey puppet swear and kill people, they unwittingly gave the go-ahead to director Jordan Downey to keep the bullshit coming. They gave him an inch, and he took a mile; welcome to Thankskilling 3.
THE PLOT~ Who the fuck knows?
Okay, so, I kind of know, but I feel angry having to explain it, due to how overwhelmed I am by its shittiness. Basically, Thankskilling 3 is an adventure comedy, not a horror comedy, in which several different types of “who gives a shit” become interwoven into a vast tapestry of raw, unprocessed nonsense. Firstly, we have Turkie, the killer Turkey from the first movie. He wants a copy of Thankskilling 2, which was apparently the worst movie ever made (in reality, it was never made. They skipped part two, aren’t they hilarious?). Copies are scarce, because the studio decided to destroy the film after seeing how horrible it was. If only they did that in real life. Opposite Turkie, we have two humans who are obsessed with colonial America, and a shit load of puppets. Yeah… Unless I missed somebody, there are only two actual human people in this movie, and the rest of the cast are all Z-Grade muppets, plus one animated cat, for some reason. This might almost sound cool on paper, but I beg of you; please, believe me when I say that it isn’t. One of these horrible, boring puppets is Yomi, a painfully unfunny character who eats up way too much screen time and who gives us nothing back.
Behold: Yomi; the worst character ever.
Her deal is that she’s “lost her mind,” and thinks that she can reclaim it through observance of the Thanksgiving holiday… Because she heard something about Thanksgiving providing “peace of mind.” Cute… See, this movie goes out of it’s way to provide explanations for the wrong stuff. They offer explanations only when those explanations kill jokes, other stuff that demands further clarification remains shrouded in vulgar, irritating mystery. It’s infuriating. But let’s get back to topic; Yomi. Yomi sucks so, so, bad, like damn Jar Jar, and is a real chore to tolerate. Basically; her felt ass shouldn’t be in the movie at all, and I can’t imagine why she was included. Wanna know what else shouldn’t be in the movie?! The movie. All of it. Every friggin’ frame. Thanksgiving 3 is unwelcome in this dimension, it should have remained stranded in the diseased imagination of Jordan Downey. Thanks, dude.
This thing is actually less funny that it’s predecessor! I counted three instances of successful comedy in the entire film- and I wasn’t laughing. I wasn’t even smiling, I could just tell that these three gags were actual jokes, rather than just boring, lame vulgarities and/or puns. The rest of the movie can’t actually give you what it advertises, which is nothing new from this trilogy. Can it be a trilogy if they half assed it to the point that there wasn’t even a part two? This is the first two movie trilogy in mankind’s regrettable history. Fuck, I hope it’s also the last.
What seems to have happened after the success of Thankskilling, motivated 100% by the sheer absurdity of the its premise rather than it’s execution, is that Downey became so enthused that he rapid fire spat out an unrefined, stream of consciousness style script, never once read over it, and then just put the movie out before he could even think about what he had done. Either that or his allergy medication left him deranged for the entire production cycle, and because the budget came from crowd-funding, there was no studio system in place to reign him in. This is an early example of how Kickstarter can screw the human race, we sometimes need a studio-head to step in and question the mad ravings of our writers and directors. This schizophrenic disaster is what can happen without these often detested, but apparently necessary safeguards, and none of these ideas should have made it even onto a rough draft of anything. And there are so, so many bad ideas in Thankskilling 3! Every concept is explained by introducing two additional and equally shitty concepts, and there is never any pay off. This movie is like a weird dream you wouldn’t even want to explain to your friends, because what would be the point?
I guess it does have a couple things going for it, though. The budget is clearly much higher than it’s poorhouse predecessor, and you feel that come across in the production value. The music feels especially professional, even if it does feature a lot more dub-step than any other DVD that I own. What you’re really going to appreciate in Thankskilling 3, however, is the art department, who really did a fantastic job. The sets, and many of the puppets, look excellent this time around, and clearly, this is where most of that budget went… but it still doesn’t redeem the movie.
The film is just bad madness, plain and simple. I actually really enjoy madness, typically, but this in’t Jodorowsky or Lynch, this is more like Battlestar Galactica meets the first season of South Park as related to you by an eight year old. If you’re going to give us madness, it at least has to be compelling, or rewarding somehow. This movie is just a joyless descent into The strata beneath mediocrity. You know what Thanksgiving 3 is like? Here’s a good way to explain it: You know like, when you wake up in the middle of the night with an idea, and you write it down because you’re convinced you’re a genius, but then in the morning you read it, and you’re like “Oh, damn. What was I thinking?” So then you just discard it, humiliated by the inadequacies of your sleep addled brain? It feels like Jordan Downey, woke up, wrote this script, and then instead of reading it and throwing it away the next morning, he just made the movie before he could even think about what was happening. And that’s terrible. Someone should have intervened, stepped up and said, “Hey, Jordan… I like you, and I want the best for you, but nothing in your movie makes any damn sense, and it all sucks. I think maybe you just need to put your script in the garbage… And then maybe let someone who isn’t high on cold medicine write a new one…”
Someone needs to stop this guy. I mean, seriously, YOMI!? Sober up, Downey, so you can feel the shame of what you’ve done. Honestly, give me a Jar Jar Binks solo film before you give me one more second with that nightmare.
F