Black Gate

Considering all the stories one hears about how stressful Thanksgiving family time can be, it’s surprising that the annual bacchanalia of feasting and intoxicated relatives has not been fodder for more Thanksgiving-themed horror movies. There have been a few of course, such as Home Sweet Home and Thankskilling, but they have been campy and largely forgettable, in spite of the bewildering amount of material to work with.

But, as we reported last week, Jason Blum and his crew at Blumhouse Productions are on a very entertaining roll turning your cherished memories upside down. Last year they joined forces with Hulu for an analogy project called Into the Dark, dedicated to releasing holiday-themed horror films every month. Blumhouse’s Thanksgiving offering for 2019 will likely go down in history as the best Thanksgiving-horror movie tie in ever.

In a collaboration between screenwriter Noah Feinberg and the writing duo Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan (Feast, Saw IV-VII) Pilgrim isn’t just a horror story that happens to be set during Thanksgiving, but instead is a film steeped in Thanksgiving history and tradition; all of which is perversely twisted for our enjoyment.

A woman invites Pilgrim re-enactors into her home to give her family an authentic recreation of the first Thanksgiving, all in the hopes that they’ll put down their phones, cast their differences aside, and learn to truly appreciate one another – if only for a couple days. But when the actors refuse to ever break character and their behavior becomes increasingly concerning, the lessons they bring may come at a deadly cost.

Not long after daughter Cody wishes on a turkey wishbone that her step-mother’s Thanksgiving plans backfire in her face, Pilgrims Ethan (Peter Giles) and Patience (Elyse Levesque) arrive at the family’s home and her fears (and wishes) come true. Ethan and Patience represent Puritanical extremism at its most frightening and aren’t afraid to get a whole lot of blood on their hands in the process of spreading their message. Their mission is simple: make the family appreciate what they’ve got.

Check out the trailer….

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If you’re not familiar with the fairly cheesy but no less iconic television series Fantasy Island (1977-1984), you immediately need to find it on your favorite streaming service and watch a few episodes. I found at least a few of the 286 installments for free on YouTube and those should be enough to hook you as well as give you the context for the most awesome news since Elsa got drunk and crapped up Chicago with 4 inches of snow.

The storyline was fairly simple. The incredibly wealthy and mysterious Mr. Roarke, played perfectly by the exotically-accented Ricardo Montalban, has a tropical island. In each episode he hosts several guests who have come there to live out their most secret fantasies. Mr. Roarke and his rather adorable but equally creepy sidekick “Tattoo” played by Hervé Villechaize, magically transport each guest into their fantasy where they routinely learn a hard lesson / get their comeuppance / get their heart’s desire, etc, etc.

Now, even my grade-school self who was obsessed with this show, wondered why these fantasies were always so G-rated, even if they sometimes bordered on scary. Like most kids I had stumbled across and snuck looks at verboten material and understood in a small way that the dark recesses of the human imagination were far murkier than finally showing up the high school cheerleader who was always more popular than you, by become a millionaire business woman. In college, Fantasy Island occasionally cropped up in discussion as we mulled over what would actually go on if a place like this really existed. And having run across the show on late night reruns, my adult self immediately wondered why some enterprising film maker had never explored that exact question. I figured there had to be some legal hang up somewhere.

And now this.

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