You have to love it when classic tropes are turned on their heads. There are so many clichés in film these days, its truly enjoyable when a movie recognizes them and then does the unexpected. A great example of this is Shaun of the Dead. In that movie there were several situations where because of what we have seen in other zombie films, we expect certain scenes to play out in a certain way, but Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg messed with our preconceived notions of what a zombie movie can be and created a genuinely hilarious but still somewhat scary (if not, gory) zombie movie. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil does for the slasher genre of horror films, what Shaun of the Dead did for zombie movies.
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil starts with a group of college students going on a camping trip in some remote woods, the very woods where, twenty years earlier there was a horrific series of murders. At the same time, we are introduced to two hillbilly types, Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine). Tucker and Dale have decided to go on vacation at their newly purchased, dilapidated cabin. While fishing, Tucker and Dale encounter the group of college kids skinny dipping and see one of the girls , Allison (30 Rock's Katrina Bowden) slip and fall on some rocks, and rescue her. When Tucker and Dale signal her friends that they have Allison, they freak out and runaway thinking that Tucker and Dale are the creepy homicidal hillbillies from the murders twenty years ago, and they are kidnapping Allison. What follows is a series of unfortunate, yet hilarious, misunderstandings, involving the college kids accidently killing themselves in their attempts to “rescue” Allison. The college kids think that it is Tucker and Dale who is doing the killing, and one of the college kids, Chad (Jesse Moss), becomes psychopathic in his attempts to fight back against the hillbillies. It's an interesting twist where we find ourselves rooting for the creepy hillbillies over the college kids, unlike similar films in this genre such as the Jason series. In the meantime, Allison begins to fall for the affable Dale and a relationship begins to take shape.
To enjoy this movie you really need to be able to suspend you disbelief. The situations that occur are imaginative as they are impossible. But this is not a film entrenched in reality, its a fun, comic misadventure. Besides being a hilarious twist on the slasher genre, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil also contains a nice message about not judging people by their appearances, especially along class lines. The college kids are portrayed as wealthy, frat-types and immediately assume Tucker and Dale are homicidal maniacs because of their low-class appearance. This message is particularly poignant in these times of social and political unrest between classes, where we see the 99% and the 1% at odds with each other.
Above all, this is a funny movie. Mostly driven by set-pieces involving the classic slasher movie props. There's a great chainsaw scene where Tucker is cutting logs with a chainsaw and accidently cuts into a beehive and starts running and screaming while waving the chainsaw, away from the bees, but towards the college kids. There's also a reference to the classic wood chipper scene from Fargo, and if the weaponry couldn't get iconic enough there are scenes with both a machete (speaking of Jason) as well as the immortal sawmill. As such, the film is also not without its fair share of horror and gore as each of the college kids are maimed as a result of their own doing. Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine give great performances as the reluctant heros. Katrina Bowden is sweet and pleasant as the faux damsel in distress, but her performance is a little stilted. She pretty much plays a more grounded version of her character Cerie from 30 Rock. Jesse Moss goes way over-the-top as the deranged college kid, but I wasn't expecting much from him in the first place and his performance does fit in pretty well with the overall unbelievability of the film as a whole. I highly recommend this movie for those of you who are tired of the same old gimmicks of the slasher genre and want to see something that pokes fun at them while containing a few of its own scares as well.
Rating: 7/10 - Virtuous
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