Enter 'Pilgrim,' Into the Dark's most recent addition. This movie will highlight everything your teachers refused to tell you about the tradition of Thanksgiving.
For those who don't know, Hulu hosts a long-running holiday-horror anthology called 'Into the Dark.' This collection of holiday-themed horror films has been leading the market in taking spins on holiday-horror classics. Remember Eli Roth's Thanksgiving? Throw that movie out the window. Pilgrim is arguably the best, campiest, most fun, and most socially motivated Thanksgiving-themed horror movie made to date.
The folks over at Blumhouse productions have a knack for picking the perfect scripts and directors for their projects. Specifically in Pilgrim, Noah Feinberg, the writer of Feast, Saw IV-VII, The Collector, and The Collection, is fearless in his intention to retell Thanksgiving as a true story. How it really went down. Without all of the whitewashed nonsense that we were taught in elementary school.
The basic plot of Pilgrim centers around a family that is struggling with their "familial identity." Long story short, mom doesn't want her kids to grow up and start disliking holidays with the family (parents, this is inevitable), so she decides to hire a group of historical reenactors to demonstrate the importance of Thanksgiving to her children. This backfires when the reenactors trap the family in their home and show the TRUE vision behind the first Thanksgiving, deception under the guise of transparency, and the stealing of property and goods.
While Pilgrim is steeped in social rhetoric, its cinematography is surprisingly well done for a low budget Thanksgiving-themed horror film. Even though October just ended and you might be reluctant to take down your Halloween decorations, watching Pilgrim just might put you in the mood for turkey day (or not, I don't get to decide how you celebrate).