Unconventional Thanksgiving Films

Thanksgiving can be a wonderful holiday of food and happiness but it can also be an awkward event with emotional landmines. Either way, here are some unconventional movies that you can watch to go with the good and the bad of the holiday.

* Kristy

Kristy was one of the best films I watched last year. Justine is staying at her university over Thanksgiving break because she can't afford to visit her family when a gang of masked killers invade. She has to step up and outsmart her assailants using every bit of knowledge she has about the school to survive. I could watch this film over and over. I love Justine as a final girl. She's kickass, intelligent, and relentless. The cyber society dedicated to killing random privileged women around he world gives it an extra bit of creepiness. It's definitely made it into my cycle of yearly movies.

* Thankskilling

Who doesn't want to watch a movie starring a foul mouthed puppet turkey that kills moronic teenagers? It's not the best movie, but it has a lot of cheesy charm going for it. The characters are all horribly stupid and completely stereotypical. The charm is in the ridiculous situations. My favorite scene involves the turkey killing the local sheriff and wearing his face. The teenagers are fooled by his disguise multiple times. I do wish he would have spoken less as most of what he says was too close to a cute rate Freddy Krueger. It's still a fun movie that's only a little longer than an hour which is perfect. 

* Home for the Holidays

For those of us that don't have idyllic Thanksgiving dinners, this film shows a more disfunctional famliy. Claudia's life is completely falling apart and hits rock bottom just as Thanksgiving is rolling around. It has disparate family members clashing over food, life decisions, and social issues. At its core, it shows that although we love family, we don't always see eye to eye and even if we don't particularly like each other at times. It's definitely mandatory viewing for me because it has some hilarious scenes and relatable moments.

My 5 Favorite Mass Kill Scenes from Horror Films

I love gory horror films and I always appreciate a good kill scene. I find that mass kill scenes are more impressive and more creative than the typical one victim scenes. Here are some of my favorites:

1) The Opening Scene of Ghost Ship



Ghost Ship is not a good film, but this scene is a must see. It's one of the most unique and memorable kill scenes of all time. The glamour and old time elegance is interrupted by a wire slicing across the dance floor. The moment of calm as we see the bloody wire and the dancers are shocked into silence before they realize what happened is perfect. Too bad the rest of the film didn't live up to this scene.

2) The Elevator Scene from The Cabin in the Woods



In this scene, all the monsters trapped in the facility are released by elevator. It has every monster you could think of in American horror: zombies, a Pinhead lookalike, ominous masked figures, ghosts, giant snakes, killer trees, and so many more. Waves upon waves of blood fly and it becomes comical since these people are used to inflicting these creatures on others. The ding of an elevator has never been so ominous.

3) The Car Crash Scene from Final Destination 2



This crash scene is epic. I never really thought of things falling off of trucks, but now I can't not think about it when I drive behind them.

4) The Club Scene from The Collection



I have no idea how this killer set up this crazy kill, but I'll set aside my disbelief because it's awesome. This film tops everything from the first film by sealing in and literally mowing down an entire club full of people. As a person, I assume being in crowds and in public are safer than being alone. This scene disproves that in an over the top, gory way.

5) The Train Scene from Suicide Club



The scene starts out as normal: a large amount of people, mostly comprised of young girls, waiting for the train. Then the young women join hands to form a huge line and jump in front of the train to jaunty, cheerful music. This is from the very beginning of the film and it leaves a big, bloody impression and whole lot of questions.

Do you have any favorite mass horror movie kills?

I'm back! (rant and list)

Hello all. I meant to keep posting throughout the semester, but I have never had so much stress and unhelpful people, and bureaucratic crap to go through. The following is a rant about the semester, so feel free to completely ignore if you aren't interested.

I have had the worst semester ever in my life, so I fell of the face of the planet. My student teaching started off on a bad start when I  had to harass the coordinator for a week before classes started to get my assignment. Then I didn't know what date it started or ended because my lovely school doesn't see fit to make that clear at the beginning or really ever.

Then, I was placed with a band director that had no control over their classroom at all and I, as a brand new teacher, was expected to magically fix all the behavior problems. This person also undermined any sort of authority I had all the time so the kids didn't respect me at all. This person basically thought of me as a free secretary/assistant and would make me teach without her observation, which is required for me to improve and receive input. My supervisor that comes and observes me every so often was completely unhelpful and only succeeded in being completely discouraging, insulting, and a bit sexist. About a month before the semester was over, he said if things don't improve, I'm not going to pass. I had shown improvement and didn't really know what else I could do to improve the situation. I was incredibly stressed and hopeless.

I did end up passing because that teacher I worked with, although awful to work with, really fought for me. I'm so happy to never set foot in that school ever again and to have lots and lots of free time this summer.

Anyway, here is a list of things that kept me sane over this hellish, horrible time.

1) The Binding of Isaac

This adorable and creepy video game is addicting as hell. Isaac is a sweet little boy with a mother who tries to kill him because God told her to. The game features dungeon exploration clearly influenced by Legend of Zelda. Isaac starts in the basement to hide from Mom and works through creepy crawlies and monsters in the cutest cartoony style to kill his mother with the help of items, trinkets, tarot cards, and pills before she kills him. He ventures into this hellish dungeon nude and only welding his own tears as weapons. Each powerup and certain items changes his appearance, making him at times appear horribly disfigured and/or mutated. The game stays fresh because each dungeon is randomly generated with a huge number of creatures, mini bosses, and stage bosses. The deeper implications are pretty depressing, but give the game interesting layers of reality and fiction. If you have a pitch black sense of humor like me, you will like this game. I would play the game for about an hour each night after school to wind down and relax.

2) Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Making a complete 180 from Isaac, Animal Crossing: New Leaf is a super addicting, cutesy Nintendo game.  You are the mayor of a town full of animals and the town looks kind of crappy with boarded up buildings and not a whole lot to do. It is up to you to build up the town with ordinances, public works projects, planting greenery, donating stuff to the museum, etc, etc. You can do anything you want in the game: go fishing, catch bugs, earn money, talk to villagers, make the town look like how you want, among many other things. I've played this game since it came out for the DS because my boyfriend played it and I've been hooked every since. This game was only out for about 2 weeks before school was out, but it helped me push through to the end.

3) Books of course!

Books also kept me sane. I read in every free moment. Even though a lot of the books I read in that time were kind of mediocre, they still gave me a nice distraction from my worries and kept me entertained in the long hours I sometimes had to sit around.

So that's it for today. My awful semester and the stuff that kept me sane. What stuff keeps you sane in crazy times?