“Oh hidy-ho officer, we’ve had a doozy of a day. There we were minding our own business, just doing chores around the house, when kids started killing themselves all over my property.”
A sophisticated comedy of errors smeared over with enough blood and guts to make the squeamish among us (e.g. my wife) constantly avert their eyes from the screen, first-time director Eli Craig’s Tucker & Dale vs. Evil ardently sends up its genre by reversing the traditional hixploitation dynamic. Though it peaks early and eventually runs its main joke into the ground, it’s a refreshing excursion for viewers weary of formulaic backwoods slashers.
Where the usual hillbilly horror flick sees creepy hicks terrorizing naïve city folk who find themselves out in podunk territory for one reason or another, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil inverts this scenario by making its rednecks lovable and one of the uppity college kids a bloodthirsty psychopath. The story centers on two country bumpkins, the eponymous Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine), who are heading out to their newly purchased dream vacation home for a weekend of renovation, fishing, and beer-guzzling. But their idyllic sojourn is not to be. Camping nearby is an invasive group of young urbanites led by the demented fratboy Chad (Jesse Moss), who immediately assumes that the rough-looking yokels are stalking him and his friends. This notion is only reinforced when the pair rescue Allison (Katrina Bowden) from drowning and the act is mistaken for a kidnapping. What follows is an intricately designed comedy that ping pongs back and forth between the college kids’ absurdly incorrect deductions, their violent retaliations, and Tucker and Dale’s clueless reactions to the escalating conflict.
Don’t be sorry, it’s my fault. I should have known if a guy like me talked to a girl like you, somebody would end up dead.
Assuming that Allison is just the latest victim of their creepy serial killer neighbors, the college kids mount a rescue effort complete with homemade spears and a hatchet. Meanwhile, the simple-minded Dale uses this opportunity to acquaint himself with Allison. In the opening scene, while both parties were stocking up on some last minute supplies at a gas station, he’d approached her at Tucker’s prompting. But it had gone all wrong. He’d been so nervous as to not realize he was using a Grim Reaper–esque scythe as a walking stick, he had a cheek full of munched hard boiled egg in his mouth, and he was so petrified of talking to a girl that his casual laugh came out as the cackle of a maniac. But in the confines of their dilapidated and dusty vacation home, Allison discovers, as we’ve known all along, that beneath their rough exteriors Tucker and Dale are warm-hearted gentlemen. In fact, she feels so safe and happy in the presence of her rescuers that she begins to fall in love with Dale.
As Chad leads a retributive attack against them, leading to a number of accidental and gruesome deaths, Tucker and Dale become convinced that the campers have formed a suicide pact. It’s an odd formula, with the two leads rummaging about a pitch-perfect buddy comedy while the panicked campers lurch through the beats of a slasher—but it works beautifully. The comedy is balanced between gross-out splatter—think impalement, amputation, wood chippers, chainsaws, etc.—and the growing confusion of the central pair, which gradually builds up to a decidedly underwhelming and humorless confrontation between Chad and Dale that threatens to turn the movie into the very thing it is aiming to poke fun at. But that slight dip in comedic pitch can only diminish the overall product so much when the chemistry between the two leads has been consistently hysterical throughout. Indeed, it is the performances of Tudyk and Labine, perfectly in-sync and working from a sharp script, that make Tucker & Dale vs. Evil special. One could easily envision a modest “Tucker & Dale vs.” series developing, though the planned sequel hasn’t been mentioned in quite some time.
While it’s possible to view the entire project as mocking bargain bin horror cinema, you get the sense that those involved are genuinely fond of the material they are spoofing, which is crucial to the film’s success as it remains in that same goofy mode for the entirety of its brief runtime. You might grow tired of the schtick before it’s over, but if it clicks for you, it’s a lot of fun.