Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010)

Movie Info

I love Fargo….arrrghh!!!!!! (another Fargo suicide in a growing trend)

A group of college students head to a remote cabin and encounter a couple of hillbillies.  Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) however have feelings.  They’ve just gotten a new cabin as a summer home they are trying to fix up, and Tucker just wishes he could have a nice college girlfriend like Allison (Katrina Bowden).  When Allison almost drowns, Tucker saves her, but her friends think Tucker and Dale have kidnapped her.  After a series of accidents, Tucker and Dale find themselves facing off against the college kids and hoping for survival…because Chad (Jesse Moss) holds a secret, and his hatred of hillbillies knows no end.

Directed by Eli Craig, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil was a reversal of stereotype horror movie trends like Wrong Turn and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  It had a limited release but was well received by the critics.

Crap…Us yuppies are going to have to take out those hillbillies!

Tucker & Dale vs Evil was a fun, if not goofy movie.  The movie found a strange balance between being a spoof, a true horror movie, and a comedy.  Craig obviously really researched it and knows his horror movies.  The jokes and the style of the film all hold kind of a cross of styles between modern gore and classic ’80s horror.  Using the clichés, allows the script to still be gory without being a I kind of expected a different turn of events.  I thought that it would be a real “evil” showing up that would force the college kids and Tucker and Dale to work together.  Fortunately, the story went the more difficult route of having it completely circumvent a real “evil”.

Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine are a good combo for Tucker and Dale.  They get grimy enough for hillbilly status, but Alan Tudyk is charming enough as Tucker that it is halfway believable that Katrina would fall for him.  The other college students could have been played with more…I would have like to have seen more stereotypes presents in the students (they were there but undeveloped).  I know that they aren’t the stars (part of the role reversal) but that could also have been a lot of fun.

Weirdly enough, this happened to my last girlfriend too!

I wish they had gotten a bit better actor for Chad.  He is the stereotype jock type, but he came off too cartoonish in a cartoonish movie.  I think they were trying for an unstoppable evil character with him like a Jason or Leatherface, but it just seemed more like a punk who wasn’t intimidating at all.  That probably is what they were going for, but I would have loved him to be more hardcore horror.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil was a surprising entertaining and if you are a fan of horror you should check it out.  Non-horror fans might find some of the gore a bit much, but it is tamer than true horror films.  I wouldn’t mind if Tucker and Dale took on evil again…but it would be a cliché also.