Thanksgiving Horror Movies: Every Holiday Slasher Worth Watching

The short answer

The best Thanksgiving horror movie is Thanksgiving (2023), Eli Roth's slasher about a killer in a Pilgrim mask stalking a Massachusetts town a year after a deadly Black Friday stampede. It streams on Hulu and Disney+ in the US. After that the subgenre gets thin, and pretty silly, quite quickly. That's half the fun. Blood Rage (1987) is the best of the older slashers, and ThanksKilling (2008) is the one to watch with friends who enjoy bad movies.

Horror has claimed Halloween and Christmas, but very few films are set over Thanksgiving. Below is every one worth your time, roughly from best to worst, with the year and director. Streaming details are for the US in November 2026. Where we couldn't confirm a service, check JustWatch. For something that isn't horror, see our best Thanksgiving movies.

The best Thanksgiving horror movies

Thanksgiving (2023)

Eli Roth turned his fake trailer from Grindhouse (2007) into a full feature. The film follows a town terrorised by a killer dressed as the Pilgrim John Carver. Patrick Dempsey plays the sheriff, and Nell Verlaque, Addison Rae and Milo Manheim play the teenagers on the list. It's nasty, funny and well made, and it made $46.6 million on a $15 million budget, according to Wikipedia). Streaming: Hulu and Disney+.

Blood Rage (1987)

Twin brothers, a drive-in murder and a Thanksgiving night escape from a psychiatric hospital. Louise Lasser gives a strange performance as the mother, and the gore effects are better than the budget suggests. Director: John Grissmer. It is a cult slasher and was hard to find for years.

Home Sweet Home (1981)

An escaped killer crashes a family Thanksgiving at a remote California ranch. The film is cheap and clumsy. It's still worth seeing as an early-1980s holiday slasher, and the bodybuilder Jake Steinfeld plays the villain.

Black Friday (2021)

Bruce Campbell and Devon Sawa play toy-store workers on the night after Thanksgiving, when an alien parasite turns the shoppers into monsters. It's a horror comedy about retail work. Director: Casey Tebo.

ThanksKilling (2008)

A foul-mouthed killer turkey hunts college students home for the holiday. The film is deliberately terrible and very proud of it. It has a sequel, ThanksKilling 3, that skips part two as a joke.

Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006)

A Troma musical about a fast-food chicken restaurant built on a Native American burial ground. It isn't strictly a Thanksgiving film, but it's the poultry horror movie. Very gross, and for adults only.

Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County (1998)

A found-footage TV movie in which a family's Thanksgiving dinner is interrupted by aliens. It aired on UPN and fooled some viewers at the time. Fans of our found footage horror movies list should look it up.

Grindhouse's "Thanksgiving" trailer (2007)

The original two-minute fake trailer that started it all, made for Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse. It's much cruder than the 2023 film and is easy to find online.

Is Thanksgiving 2 coming?

Not yet. Roth announced a sequel soon after the first film opened in November 2023. In January 2026 the production was postponed, as Polygon reported, and there's still no release date.

What to watch next

If you want scares that aren't tied to the holiday, start with our best psychological horror movies or the new horror movies streaming roundup. Curry Barker's Obsession (2026) reaches Netflix on November 17, 2026, according to TV Guide.