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Bringing a welcome change to the hill-meets-billy horror formula, writer/director Eli Craig’s Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil is a hilarious spoof of backwoods terror. After waiting some 40-plus years, we have a movie that celebrates the southerner as the unsung hero without crossing the expected horror lines…just changing the viewpoint. Finally, the regionally-challenged locals are the heroes and the wrongheaded Spring Breakers are, well, the villains. It’s a movie that delivers the horrorific goods with a great sense of humor that grows out of a simple misunderstanding solidified by a maddening surreal series of unfortunate (and über bloody) events.
Two well-meaning but dim-witted hicks, Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine), - spending the weekend in their recently purchased rundown shack – come across a group of college students at a gas station. Dale, finding himself drawn to Allison (Katrina Bowden), decides to approach and chat her up. The problem is his inferiority complex and he completely embarrasses himself in front of her and her friends - Chad (Jesse Moss), Chloe (Chelan Simmons), Chuck (Travis Nelson), Jason (Brandon Jay McLaren), Naomi (Christie Liang), Todd (Alex Arsenault), Mitch (Adam Beauchesne) and Mike (Joseph Allan Sutherland) – before rejoining Tucker. The two groups go their separate ways…which, as it turns out, is the same neck of the woods in West Virginia.
Their paths cross again. After rescuing Allison from a nasty skinny dipping accident, Tucker & Dale are thought to have kidnapped the missing college student and her friends, completely wrong as she is resting peacefully in Tucker & Dale’s shack, come after them with every weapon imaginable. They are hell-bent on Allison’s “rescue” from these two hillbillies and this unfortunate and humorous misunderstanding leads to a series of slapstick accidental deaths – including impalements, headfirst wood chipper diving, bloody disembowelments, and a nasty lawn mower face shredding – as the two parties try to understand exactly what is happening.
Written by Eli Craig and Morgan Jurgenson, Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil is a smartly scripted battle of survival between two entirely different camps and lifestyles. It’s an uncommon civil war of sorts that sparks more hilarity than the usual comedy of earthbound errors. Sure, it’s a one-off joke that’s been extended to a feature length movie, but it works a hell of a lot better than you’d think it should. Upon repeat viewings, the film reveals just how much of macabre masterpiece of mayhem that it actually is. Each cliché is dusted off, carefully examined, and then upended by the double-edged sword that is Craig’s perfectly-paced script and the sweetness of Tudyk and Labine’s performances.
The rural southerner is a great caricature for the American horror formula. Brown tobacco stains their unshaven chins, bloodshot eyes wide open at the crack of dawn, and chainsaws are their favorite toy to wildly sling around and chase scantily clad teenagers on Spring Break with. It’s a trope that has been relatively unchanged for many a long year. Dare I suggest that even audiences are tired of it? Consider the disappearing revenue of certain horror entries into the canon as the proof in the proverbial pudding, Earl. Still, we plow madly ahead with remakes (Straw Dogs) and reboots (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) that keeps the crazy-eyed hillbilly with his fists aimed at the sky and his mouth full of spittle.
That is, until now.
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