Tucker and Dale vs Evil

Imagine a horror movie where all of the young kids who serve as the film's victims die gruesome deaths but where you don't have to feel guilty about enjoying the killings because the kids are the aggressors and are either too stupid or too evil to live anyway. That's what you have with "Tucker and Dale vs. Evil," a very funny horror comedy that upends the psychotic-hillbilly motif that's played so straight in so many other movies by having the hillbillies be sweet, lovable guys who don't understand why a bunch of preppy college kids are attacking them.

Not only is the movie funny, but it's surprisingly sweet and smart, with two terrific performances at its center and some clever writing throughout that prevents what could have been a one-note joke from imploding.

And I'm going to start including "frat bitch" as part of my standard vocabulary.

Grade: A

What if you showed a backwoods-horror movie where city slickers take a wrong turn from the hillbillies point of view? What if they turned out to be basically decent folks who just wanted to go fishing at their vacation home? And, finally, what if it was the hillbillies who had to fend off against a murderous psychopath and got to take the pretty girl home?

But of course make it so that our surrogate watchers, a bunch of college kids out in the woods, should presume to know that hillbillies are a bunch of violent inbreds because they're familiar with the same movie lore we are, say Deliverance onwards. Make it so that a man with a chainsaw whizzing above his head recasts the most epochal scene from Texas Chainsaw as accident. Our enjoyment is that we're always placed a little closer, watching for a little longer, to know that there is no horror movie outside what is being imagined.

So there you have it; a Two-Thousand Maniacs with misunderstood maniacs. It's a clever idea, and new as far as I know in this field.

Now if horror is generally looked down upon, even in cases of solid craftsmanship, I wager it's for how it posits a battle with evil in absolute terms. We know that life is more a complex struggle than Hammer served us. Every horror film that matters has innovated by placing us one step closer to where real horror is assembled. Vampyr posited that it happened because we wanted to. Psycho moved the monster from the swamps to next door, and that was important enough at the time. Night of the Living Dead posited an entire world of insensate havoc but with no malice in the instinctive drive. The Tenant and later Videdrome transferred every visible distortion back in the retina of the mind's eye. In Possession, horror was the visual representation turned inside out from tortured soul.

This is just as good in this way. There is no evil outside a series of unfortunate events, we come to understand. There is only circumstance and our built-in notions of what any set of circumstances ought to mean. With film having saturated so deeply the world we know, in a lot of these cases what we claim to know we know from movies.

Our loss is that the idea must have seemed so striking and novel to whoever was approached to fund, that the project was rushed ahead before there was a chance to iron it out. So the first joke, a great joke, is played over and over again and wears itself thin. The finale resolves with just sparks flying from a chainsaw fight.

The extra layer that was probably tucked in at the last moment, is that the massacre backstory that we understood was just a campfire tale improvised on the spot, and was generic like a Wrong Turn sequel, is supposed to be culled from real life. So there was truth behind the legend, mangled many times over in the telling, that powers the chain of events to replicate it.

It makes sense then that one part of the movie, where evil is imagined, always plays out like a movie. Every time he appears on screen, he swirls everything into the narrative he was taught to have sprung from. It's pretty nifty.

TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL takes on the typical "killer hillbillies" movie by turning the entire sub-genre inside out. Through accident, misunderstanding, and assumption, a comedy of errors becomes a bloodbath!

Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) look like a pair of rustic maniacs, at least to the group of college kids who have crossed their path. Multiple deaths occur, sending everything into chaos. Will anyone live long enough to figure out what's really going on?

Hilarious, and at times, poignant, this could be a movie for the whole family, if it weren't for the outrageous gore...

Lol!! This is just too good!! What starts off as a camping trip for some college kids turns into the weirdest, most unlikely chain of events that results in most of the kids dying in the most crazy, hilarious ways! To quote the movie,, "do any of your friends take medication? Cause,, I think they forgot to take it."

Allison and her friends are taking time off from their crazy college schedules to go camping.

Tucker and Dale (2 hillbilly, good ole boys) are spending the weekend working on restoring the old cabin that Tucker just bought.

Allison falls off a boulder into the lake, knocking herself out in the process. Tucker n Dale are close by in their boat, so they rescue her from drowning,, but from Allison's friends vantage point,, it looks like the hillbillies are abducting their friend,,, and then the hilarity and devestation begins.

This is a black comedy,, but it's so freakin' good that everyone should see it! Lol!!

I saw the trailer to this film online and it seemed like a funny - yet unsustainable premise. I went to see it with friends anyway and I can't remember laughing so hard at a film in years. This movie takes a promising premise and knocks it out of the park. The cast is superb in this send-up of the psycho in the woods genre and the writing and direction take what I feared was an unsustainable premise and they give it surprising energy and humor. This is not Scary Movie crap. This is inventive and fresh and it has a beautiful heart. Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk are the "Hillbillies" in this hilarious tale of prejudice and paranoia and they deliver performances that are grounded and authentic. Tucker and Dale never become plodding stereotypes of ignorant rednecks. They are portrayed with great wit and dignity and the actors never overreach or retreat into the safety and insecurity of broad camp. The cast trusts the writing and the director and it pays off. The script by Morgan Jurgenson and director Eli Craig is tight, smart and has a wonderful heart. These qualities are given life by an above average cast that includes the lovely Katrina Bowden from NBC's 30 Rock. An especially guilty pleasure is the character of Chad, brilliantly played by Jesse Moss who channels some alternate universe version of a sociopathic Tom Cruise as the lead frat-boy. Eli Craig really guided home a winner with this film. The movie sets a course at the beginning and you know where you're headed in the first five minutes-- but Craig's the captain of the ship and this journey is filled with surprises and wonderfully subtle moments that give the film a fun trajectory and a brisk pace. You breezily travel through a fantastic, hilarious and utterly sublime entertainment. Bravo!