You may recognize him from Inglourious Basterds, The Idol, and more, but Eli Roth fans know he’s a filmmaker first and foremost. Such R-rated cult classics like Cabin Fever and Hostel come from Roth’s arguably (and wonderfully) twisted mind, and now he’s back with yet another blood-soaked horror entry, known simply as Thanksgiving. Does the name sound familiar? Maybe you tuned into Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse double-feature back in 2007 and saw that gloriously horrific faux trailer of the same name, which featured a masked serial killer terrorizing a Massachusetts community on Turkey Day. How about that epic trampoline kill? Oof.

Roth’s little one-minute masterpiece has now become an acclaimed feature film 15 years later, and it’s a doozy. We recently caught up with the man himself, and Roth was quick to praise his cast of “Masshole” characters who navigate a nightmarish holiday fueled by a Black Friday sale gone terribly wrong.

A Slasher Featuring Plenty of “Massholes”
Thanksgiving Release Date November 17, 2023 Director Eli Roth Cast Rick Hoffman, Gina Gershon, Patrick Dempsey, Milo Manheim, Addison Rae, Nell Verlaque Main Genre Horror
Roth is a Massachusetts native, and it shows with his Plymouth-set new B-movie featuring infamous accents that cinephiles will recognize from past classics like The Town, The Departed, and even Good Will Hunting. “Boston guys, we love the accent,” Roth told MovieWeb. “Even if you don’t have it, you still love it, or you grew up with it. Certain kids had it like ‘wicked hardcore,’ some kids less so.” Roth wanted to see Bay Stater outside those kinds of films:

Every Boston movie is about criminals, and I wanted to see those guys we grew up with in a slasher film. That was the joy for me.

Fun fact: Guess who has a real-life New England accent? Doctor McDreamy himself, a.k.a. People Magazine’s new Sexiest Man Alive, a.k.a. Patrick Dempsey — who can also be spotted in Michael Mann’s new film Ferrari. But in Thanksgiving, he takes the lead role and steals the show in more ways than one. On the topic of collaborating with the Grey’s Anatomy star, Roth says,

“When Patrick Dempsey reached out to me about being in the film, he said, ‘Should I do a New England accent?’ I was like, ‘Well, it’s my pet peeve.’ I hate movies where someone tries to do a Boston accent and fails. It ruins the movie for me. And he goes, ‘No, no, I grew up in Maine, I got a light accent. It’s more like that.’ I’m like, ‘That’s perfect.’ He goes, ‘I had to lose that accent when I became an actor.’ This is the first time Patrick Dempsey has ever used his real accent in a film. He really talks like that. So we knew that was meant to be, and so once you get Patrick and me and [co-writer] Jeff [Rendell], we start like talking like Massholes.”

Shipping Off to Plymouth
TriStar Pictures

Thanksgiving was shot in Toronto, but that didn’t stop the actors with true Massachusetts roots from coming in to try and land a role. Besides Dempsey, another standout performance is Amanda Barker, who plays a local waitress in the film’s Plymouth community. “She had a wicked accent,” said Roth. “She’s like, ‘I’m from Hanover, and not only that, I’m a descendant of John Carver. He’s an uncle.’ I’m like, ‘What?!’ She’s a direct descendant, the woman who plays Lizzie in the diner, is a direct descendant of John Carver.” Those who check out Thanksgiving this weekend will see why Carver holds particular significance in Roth’s latest project.

Related: Exclusive: Fright Krewe Showrunners on Collaborating with Eli Roth for Their Spooky New YA Series

Roth continued to discuss his other stars who had real, authentic accents — and those who at least pulled off the accent flawlessly:

“Mika [Amonsen], who plays Lonnie in the blue jacket, he’s got a wicked accent. I’m like, ‘How did you know how to do this accent?’ He’s like, ‘Well, when I was a kid, I watched The Departed 600 times and learned the accent, and I watched The Town and I always just wanted to be a Boston guy in a movie.’ So we just found people like Joe Delfin and terrific actors that really got the accent. If you could do it, great. And if not, no worries. Then people like Tim Dillon, who’s got a really strong Long Island accent, but it feels regional.”

Eli Roth’s Childhood Dream of Making a Thanksgiving Slasher
 TriStar Pictures

Thanksgiving succeeds in leaning into the ’70s and ’80s slasher tone that other filmmakers are still trying to recreate today. True fans of the genre might even be familiar with the handful of classics that feature characters with thick New England accents. “I liked those earlier slasher movies like The Prowler or Don’t Go in the House that feel like regional horror movies,” said Roth. “There’s a Mass horror film called The Children from 1980, where it’s all made with local Massholes, Everybody has an accent in the film. So I love those films. I felt like I was right at home.”

Related: Thanksgiving: How Eli Roth’s Fake Trailer Turned Into a Real Slasher Horror

Given that Roth is from Massachusetts, we had to ask if he was at all tempted to play a role in his own movie. “I had a part I was going to shoot in the parade. I was gonna get killed,” he said. “But I just couldn’t get to it. It was so much to stage that I found I was spending all this time thinking about my cameo. And then I was like, ‘I can’t do it. I gotta get the scene right. The scene’s too important.’ So I focused on the other kills.”

With Roth in the director’s chair, his longtime pal (and the original trailer’s co-writer) Jeff Rendell wrote the screenplay. The two go back decades and have been making movies together ever since their youth. Roth said, “When we were kids growing up, with Plymouth Plantation and Sturbridge Village, the recreations, you go to those places. You remember what it was like in elementary school with Thanksgiving. And we’d always wanted to see a Thanksgiving slasher film.” All those years ago, Roth and Rendell had mapped out the movie’s death scenes in their imagination.

“When Jeff and I were kids, we were like, ‘Oh yeah, there’s the parade. They can chop off the guy in the turkey costume’s head, and he runs around like a turkey with his head chopped off!’ So the way we did it when we shot that parade and that scene, Jeff’s dad came to the set, and we were in Canada, and he just happened to be traveling through for business. So it was pretty amazing, because Jeff’s dad remembers us as 12-year-old kids with a VHS camera, chopping dolls up with chainsaws and filming stabbing scenes. And to see us there now, doing it as adults, was really pretty special. He just couldn’t believe it. He’s like, ‘I’m so happy for you guys.’ It was pretty incredible.”

So is Thanksgiving, which hits theaters Friday, Nov. 17.