Tucker And Dale vs Evil

Synopsis: Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) are a couple of hillbillies who have just realised their dream of owning their own vacation home. On their way to begin their holiday, they encounter a group of college kids who are convinced they’re in Deliverance territory. While skinny-dipping, Allison (Katrina Bowden) slips and nearly drowns. Dale saves her, but her friends are convinced he’s kidnapped her for evil purposes.

Opening with an ill-advised flashforward revealing the villain of the piece, isn’t getting off to the greatest of starts. But that’s only temporary, as we haven’t met Tucker and Dale yet, and they’re two of the nicest, naïvest hillbillies you could hope to meet. At a local store Dale spies Allison and tries to bring himself to chat her up, but it comes off wrong and ends up being comically threatening instead. This is the schtick of the entire film: well-intentioned acts by the friendly hillbillies are continually misinterpreted by the paranoid college kids which leads to a series of slapstick gore-fests as their over-reactions lead to their own messy demise. Tucker even develops a theory after the second incident that they’re stuck in the middle of a giant suicide pact.

It’s a great concept and Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk are both amusingly credible as the lovable hillbillies completely confused by the events taking place around them. Unfortunately, while Katrina Bowden is great as the embryonic love interest, the rest of the college kids are an amorphous mass of preppy boys and nubile girls. The only exception to this is Jesse Moss as Chad, the most paranoid of the group, and also the worst actor in the film. His attempt at a scenery-chewing psycho is pitiful, and in the end he’s just annoying rather than either threatening or intriguing. It’s a shame, because the script does a good (if belated) job of explaining his fear and hatred, and a bit more work could have really sold the “Evil” that Tucker and Dale face off against.

A really sweet, funny and gory reversal of the typical “cabin in the woods” horror story, Tucker & Dale vs Evil isn’t entirely successful in pulling off its clever premise, particularly in the later stages when the joke has started to wear thin, but it does come pretty darn close.

 

 

Want more about this film?

    

Want something different?