Eli Roth says Black Friday is the real villain of his horror movie 'Thanksgiving': 'Consumerism run amok'

Forget undercooked turkey, over-seasoned stuffing and awkward political conversations with your extended family — the scariest part of the Thanksgiving holiday is the cutthroat Black Friday consumerism that follows the Thursday feast. That's the dark joke at the center of Eli Roth's Turkey Day-themed horror movie, Thanksgiving, which opens with a department store stampede that racks up the body count in hilariously gruesome fashion. And the writer-director behind Cabin Fever and Hostel tells Yahoo Entertainment that the sequence was directly inspired by the all-too-real videos of actual Black Friday violence.

"Seeing those videos of Black Friday stampedes really struck a chord with me," Roth says. "The holidays are about being thankful, and [people saying] 'I'm so thankful for what I have and thankful for my health and family.' And then two hours later, people are killing each other for a flatscreen TV or a waffle iron! I love the absurdity of that."

Thanksgiving started its life as a slasher movie trailer parody nestled between the two halves of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's 2007 double feature, Grindhouse. That initial version featured a few of the bloody kills that made it into the feature film, and also established the requisite Michael Myers-esque villain — a blade-wielding killer dressed up to resemble John Carver, the first governor of the colony that became Plymouth, Mass., where the film is set and about an hour away from Newton, where Roth was born and raised.

But the lengthy break between Grindhouse and Thanksgiving — not to mention the feature-length running time — allowed Roth to paint social commentary into the movie's canvas. "It's about consumerism run amok," he explains. "Hostel deals with that as well. It's something I do find terrifying: That people can justify [violent] behavior if they're going to get something on sale. What's horrifying is how people can dehumanize someone else to the point where they're not a person anymore. It becomes a sports event.

"But it also comes from an even darker place," Roth continues. "People can't afford to get Christmas gifts for their kids because they're not getting paid enough money... so they need these sales. It's not even that it's about [their] greed. It's the greed at the top level that forces people into these gladiator games. That's the real sickness that's underneath it — it's not that the people are greedy, it's that people are forced to do this because they're not paid enough money and there's no middle class anymore. On a subconscious level, that's what's disturbing to all of us: We're all forced into this rat race of fighting over things that we think we need by overlords that are just the ones getting rich from it."

Thanksgiving's Black Friday set-piece plays like Roth's version of the "Bloody Prom" that closes out Brian DePalma's Carrie, with multiple characters converging on a seemingly safe location where an inciting incident triggers violent mayhem. "It's the most complex sequence I've ever directed," the filmmaker reveals, adding that it required four night shoots to complete. "This is my ninth feature film, and had I not done those others, I never would have been able to pull off a scene like that."

Naturally, the Black Friday sequence also features some bloody good gore, with everyday items — from shopping carts to glass doors — transformed into instruments of death. It's all a little over the top, but Roth insists that's the point, having learned his lesson from reaction to the Hostel movies, which were dismissed as "torture porn" upon release. "With Hostel, the kills were real, and I went a little bit too far," he admits. "This is a fun slasher movie."

Roth eventually found the right lane for his department store massacre after binge-watching the Final Destination series, especially the famous highway sequence that opens Final Destination 2. "If it's real and punishing, it's not fun. But when you see someone run through a piece of glass and slit their throat while going for a waffle iron, and instead of covering the wound, they get the waffle iron and pass out and then someone else rips it out of their hands — that's the tone I'm going for. It's sick and absurd, but just fun enough that you can enjoy it."

Thanksgiving is playing in theaters now.