‘Thanksgiving’s Eli Roth and Jeff Rendell Hit a High Note With ’The Piano Killer’ Trailer [Exclusive]

Nearly two decades ago, Eli Roth teased the world with a slasher flick centered around Turkey Day and, several years later, that movie served up a feature-sized production through Thanksgiving. Now, the celebrated filmmaker is in the trailer business again with the latest short-form project to come out under his modern banner, The Horror Section. Titled The Piano Killer, the brief but sweet project, which Roth created alongside his longtime collaborator, Jeff Rendell (Thanksgiving), gives fans yet another imaginative bit of content that could easily make its way into a longer format in the future. Ahead of the full trailer’s arrival in cinemas beginning on August 15 as part of the preshow entertainment prior to Joe Begos’ Jimmy & Stiggs, Collider is excited to give audiences a taste of the perfectly tuned brutality to come.

A murderous madman is on the loose in our sneak peek of the teaser for The Piano Killer as a shadowy figure in a hat and trench coat stalks a woman at night. Turning around after sensing she’s being followed, the woman looks relieved just in time for a piano to fall out of the sky and smash her to bits. From there, viewers can expect plenty of piano-themed puns, a cameo from Roth, a nod to Rendell, and — you guessed it — numerous horrific and gory kills.

Unhinged, crazy, and oozing with blood and other bodily fluids, The Piano Killer is just the thing we’ve come to expect from the visionary behind the Hostel franchise, Cabin Fever, The Green Inferno, and other wonderfully shocktastic genre flicks. As mentioned, Roth and Rendell’s 2023 film, Thanksgiving, started as a faux trailer for Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse, and took a large bite out of the box office when the feature-length version later came to fruition. Now, it’s preparing for seconds with a sequel in the works, so we could definitely see something similar happening to The Piano Killer down the line.

Fake Trailers Hold a Special Place in Eli Roth’s Heart

Sure, he loves to make audiences squirm with delightfully dastardly kill sequences and hard-to-watch scenes, but Roth admits that there’s just as much fun in making a trailer. In a statement paired with the teaser release, the filmmaker said:

“I love a good fake trailer. You get to make the best parts of the movie without having to figure out the boring things like plot, character, or emotional arc. It’s pure cinematic junk food. I wanted to add it as a little amuse bouche before Jimmy and Stiggs. And who knows, maybe there will be a feature film in this pianoverse or I’ll just keep making The Piano Killer sequel trailers for the rest of my life. That would definitely end my career on a high note. Jeff Rendell and I kept joking on the set of Thanksgiving that our next film would be called The Piano Killer. It’s basically an Argento Giallo or slasher film except the killer uses pianos. We had no idea this would actually come true. Careful what you wish for….”

Check out the first-look at The Piano Killer teaser above and see it in cinemas ahead of the neon-soaked horror of Jimmy & Stiggs when it arrives in cinemas on August 15, courtesy of The Horror Section.

Jimmy & Stiggs

Release Date

August 15, 2025

Runtime

80 minutes

Director

Joe Begos

Producers

Matt Mercer, Josh Ethier, Sierra Russell, Joe Begos

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  Matt Mercer

  Stiggs Randolph

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