Say what you will about the films of Steve Lawson (
St Patrick's Day Massacre,
Wrath of Dracula), but his films certainly have a style that feels unique to him. Within about five literal seconds of his latest horror,
The Priest - Thanksgiving Massacre starting, I had clocked it was one of his and so knew exactly what to expect. These low budget interior-set horrors are full of faults, but there is also something warming about them, I see Lawson's films as the comfort film of horrors. I have to say however, with a cast of just six (seven including a brief non-speaking though full-shrieking role), I think its a bit of a stretch to call what happens within the movie a 'massacre'.
In the early days of settlers arriving in America, a priest; Reverend Fuller (Mark Topping - Wrath of Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde) has had a disagreement with the town he was due to live in, so he took and his wife into the wilderness where he plans to build a forever home for them. Come winter and both are freezing cold and starving in their new and very small cabin. Driven mad by hunger, the priest kills his wife and starts to consume her. Realising what he has done goes against the teachings of God, the priest commits suicide, believing himself to never be allowed to go to Heaven.
In modern day, Tom (Jo Krayer) has invited his children, teenagers Noah (Brooklyn Ross in his film debut) and Andi (Holly Higbee in her feature length film debut) to spend Thanksgiving with him and his new girlfriend - Sara (Dani Thompson - Good Neighbours, Devil in the Woods) in a newly constructed woodland cabin. His separated partner, Cyndy (Liz Soutar - Powertool Cheerleaders vs the Boyband of the Screeching Dead) had only planned to drop off the kids, but with her car broken down, she is forced to accept Tom's offer to stay for Thanksgiving. Unknown to all however is that this new cabin was built on the foundations of the priest's cabin, and for reasons unknown he has resurrected under the house as a zombie.
With the prologue set hundreds of years in the past, I expected this would be another Lawson film set primarily in dimly candle lit smoky rooms. I was pleasantly surprised then to see the time skip to modern day. Sure, nearly the entirety of the movie takes place in a non-descript log cabin, but at least it is brightly lit! I didn't mind any of the characters here, and actually liked a couple of them. In particular, I found Krayer's Tom to be someone it was fun to follow. The parents may have split up, and they may have some arguments, but there is a reservedness to Tom and Cyndy's interactions that mean neither come across as seeming like horrible people. The same can't be said for Sara, just her being the only English character set her up to be a bit of a bad person. Her character was horrid, but if you are into that sort of thing there are some benefits to her being on screen, such as a scene where she is topless in a sauna. The best character, and sadly the least used was the priest. Topping may have been in the movie for a total of about seven minutes top(ping)s but his priest and later zombie-priest appearances were the highlight of the film. I did find it a bit comical that this potentially fearsome antagonist spends the majority of the movie literally trapped under the cabin, only able to interact with the cast by his arm reaching through a hole in the wooden boards under the place!
The story really wasn't the strongest point, and like the cabin itself, there were plenty of holes to be found. Surely when building the cabin they would have discovered some sort of evidence of the skeletons of the priest and his wife within the foundations, and the whole crux of Cyndy staying was due to no mechanic willing to come out to look at her car on Thanksgiving, yet it is shown later that taxi companies are still running services on that day, so she could have gotten away should she have really wanted to. There was also a bit of a silly reason given for why no character has a mobile phone on them. I did like the drama going on between the family, though Sara did stick out a bit due to always coming across as a horrid person even before the horror starts. My last complaint with the story was how the characters come to understand what is happening purely by an old diary. With little to zero evidence the group move into the third act of the film, fully convinced of the zombie priest despite not actually ever having seen him (aside from a glimpse of an arm at one point).
On the horror front, as stated, the villain is trapped under the cabin for virtually the entire movie. With a cast of just five potential victims there is no massacre to be found, but I will admit to being very surprised with just who the initial victim (in the present day section) was, I was genuinely shocked. The scenes set in the crawl space under the cabin were the most horror effective, and I did indeed wince when a character got their leg caught on a rusty nail while there, tetanus city! Special effects were sparse but they worked, maybe the blood looked a little too bright and gloopy, but it didn't take away from the scenes.
The Priest - Thanksgiving Massacre isn't a great horror film. The villain takes far too long to make an actual appearance, and there was a lot of wasted potential. I did however enjoy watching the film, Lawson always makes entertaining movies despite obvious limitations, and with this one, it did have some good moments over the eighty three minute runtime, and Topping was excellent as always.
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