Eli Roth’s back to take more perverse pleasure in pain — his movies’ “victims,” and that of viewers laughing at the gore but grimacing at the cruelty — with a holiday treat titled “Thanksgiving.”

At least with “Thanksgiving,” a splatter comedy that brings “Halloween” to Turkey Day, he’s moved on from “torture porn.” More or less.

Originally pitched as a gag trailer in “Grindhouse” many years back, the laughs here come from the horror movie archetypal characters, from the unsubtle politics and from the WAY over the top means that our “Carver” dispatches his victims over the holiday in Plymouth, Massachusetts, home of America’s second Thanksgiving.

Not going to lie, I laughed a lot until I stopped. The first act is funny, the second somewhat less and the third a dull, mostly humorless let-down of the first order. And really, how many times can we see a beheading, disemboweling or baking to death before the “joke” gets old?

Thanksgiving meals hosted by RightMart manager Mitch (Ty Olsson) and his wife (Gina Gershon) and by the RightMart owner (Rick Hoffman) and new wife Kathleen (Karen Cliche) are interrupted by the fact that “Black Friday starts on Thursday” now, and there’s already a mob down at the discount warehouse store.

Maybe Sheriff Newlon (Patrick Dempsey) should stop by, too. The store owner’s daughter Jess (Nell Verlaque) and her crew can get in early. But the crowd outside is ugly and getting uglier as “the store will open in ten minutes” announcement s plainly a lie. We hear for it repeated for twelve minutes.

And then all hell breaks loose as Eli Roth pays “tribute” to the January 6 assault and attempted coup in Washington. People are crushed and trampled in a bloody “Waffle House” brawl that Jess’s piggish jock pal Evan (Tomaso Sanelli) streams on his cell phone.

Her star baseballer boyfriend Bobby (Jalen Thomas Brooks) has his arm busted. And he got off easy. People died.

“One year later,” the store is enduring protests for daring to open for another “Black Friday.” The lawsuits died down thanks to CCTV footage that mysteriously disappeared. The holiday, the parade, the meals and the shopping are back on schedule because “I thought we moved on from that.”

And then somebody dressed in a mask of the Pilgrim town’s founding father “John Carver” starts carving, chopping, running-over and beheading people whose behavior was less than civilized in that riot the year before.

The creative killings are packed with jokes — a woman, disfigured by the madman, can’t unlock her phone to call for help because the phone doesn’t “recognize” her face, a victim stuffed in an oven with turkey thermometer as a punchline.

The traditional horror idea of “they had it coming” is underscored by the victims’ connection that “Black Friday” massacre that happened a year ago Thursday.

Jess and her pals (Addison Rae, Gabriel Davenport and Jenna Warren) are targeted in videos showing a murderous dinner’s place settings with their names on it. As the police seem indifferent or at least slow-footed considering the rising body count (events aren’t canceled), as her new boyfriend Ryan (Milo Manheim) is nobody’s idea of “protection,” where can they go for safe refuge?

Maybe the party thrown by the creepier-than-creepy son of the owner of the Plymouth Rocks gun store?

“It’s the only place in town where you won’t get killed,” is McCarty’s (Joe Deflin, funny) invitation.

The performances are rarely pitched at a level of panic, suggesting pretty much everybody’s here for the laughs.

But the audience that loves eyes-averting gore in their horror will have a “Thanksgiving” feast with this one. Eardrum puncturing to axe beheadings, many of them involving struggles, are served up for your viewing pleasure.

I’m not sure noting that the script is seemingly intentionally bad is an endorsement.

That really plays into how stupidly easy it is to figure out “whodunit.” The misdirections and false leads are barely attempted. And the film’s utterly deflating finale isn’t amusingly awful. It’s just awful, and in the most half-assed ways.

The Cult of Roth will almost certainly eat this holiday horror feast up. But this turkey is never more than a mixed bag, and as the laughs peter out and the “clues” are contrived to fit the finale, “Thanksgiving” takes that tryptophan turn towards nodding off, the curse of Turkey Day since that first Thanksgiving — in Virginia.

Rating: R for strong bloody horror violence and gore, pervasive language and some sexual material.

Cast: Nell Verlaque, Gina Gershon, Addison Rae, Gabriel Davenport, Milo Manheim, Karen Cliche, Tomaso Sanelli, Jenna Warren, Joe Deflin and Patrick Dempsey.

Credits: Directed by Eli Roth, scripted by Jeff Rendell. A Sony/Tristar release.

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