Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010) Magnet/Horror-Comedy RT: 85 minutes Rated R (strong bloody horror violence, language, brief nudity, alcohol and drug use) Director: Eli Craig Screenplay: Eli Craig and Morgan Jurgenson Music: Mike Shields Cinematography: David Geddes Release date: September 30, 2011 (US, limited release) Cast: Tyler Labine, Alan Tudyk, Katrina Bowden, Jesse Moss, Philip Granger, Brandon McLaren, Christie Laing, Chelan Simmons, Travis Nelson, Alexander Arsenault, Adam Beauchesne, Joseph Sutherland, Karen Reigh, Weezer (the dog). Box Office: $223,838 (US)
Rating: ***
It’s a scenario we see all the time in horror films. A group of college kids in a van head to hillbilly country to go camping in the woods. On the way, they stop at a rundown gas station where they encounter locals that stare and gape at them. When they reach their campsite, they do all the normal things college students on vacation do. They drink beer, smoke pot and go skinny-dipping right after one tells an allegedly true story about a massacre that took place in these very woods many years earlier. This is usually when bodies start dropping courtesy of a deranged hillbilly with a chainsaw, axe or some other implement of death. And this is where the blood-soaked horror-comedy Tucker & Dale vs. Evil veers off in an unexpected direction.
I should first explain that Tucker (Tudyk, Firefly) and Dale (Labine, New Amsterdam) aren’t your garden-variety backwoods hicks. They’re nice albeit dim guys who wouldn’t hurt a fly. They’re just looking forward to a little R&R at the “vacation home” (an old cabin generously described as a “fixer-upper”) Tucker just bought. They first encounter the college kids at the gas station where Dale works up the courage to speak to one of the girls, Ally (Bowden, Piranha 3DD). Frightened by his appearances, she and her friends haul ass out of there. The guys are stopped en route by the local sheriff who ominously tells them they’ll only find “pain and suffering on a scale you can’t even imagine” there.
So far, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil sounds like every other horror movie involving kids, hillbillies and the woods, doesn’t it? It’s NOT! It starts exactly the way I described in the first paragraph before going off its own direction. Director and co-writer Eli Craig (Little Evil) upends the genre completely by reversing character roles. Let me explain. Tucker and Dale are doing a little night fishing when they spot the kids swimming naked. They accidentally startle Ally who hits her head as she falls in the lake. The guys rescue the unconscious girl and try to summon her friends to come get her. The students, assuming they’ve kidnapped her with the intention of killing her, run off screaming. Having no other option, the guys take her back to their place to recover.
Meanwhile, the leader of the group Chad (Moss, Final Destination 3) rallies the others into a frenzy in his zeal to save Ally from the supposedly homicidal rednecks. And why shouldn’t they think that? Tucker and Dale drive a pick-up filled with deadly tools including a chainsaw. They talk funny and look weird. They must be maniacs. Except they’re not. Quite the opposite, they think there’s something wrong with the college students who keep getting killed in their efforts to rescue Ally. She’s actually in better hands with the two hillbillies.
The role switching is the cleverest aspect of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. For a change, the hillbillies aren’t deranged, toothless, ignorant maniacs. For a change, they’re treated like human beings instead of freaks. Take Dale. He’s a sweet guy who suffers from low self-esteem. He’s not educated, but still manages to beat Ally in a game of Trivial Pursuit. He has the amazing ability to remember everything he’s ever been told. Tucker is incredibly patient with his friend. He is a bit of a buffoon though. At one point, he’s attacked by bees after cutting through their hive with his chainsaw. He tries to fight them off with the chainsaw. It’s witnessed by one of the students who automatically assumes he’s doing a crazed Leatherface dance.
These college kids, on the other hand, are a bunch of entitled idiots. If you remove Ally from the equation, there’s barely enough brain matter among them to fill a coffee mug. When Ally tries to explain her “captors” are actually quite harmless, one of her friends accuses her of having Stockholm syndrome. Chad is the biggest a-hole of all of them. For reasons of his own, he operates under the belief that the only good hillbilly is a dead hillbilly.
The most disappointing aspect of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil is the CGI gore. It’s a real disconnect. It’s too bad because there are a few good kill scenes that would have looked great with old-fashioned fake blood. Two of the kids get impaled. One jumps head first into a wood chipper. Another accidentally shoots himself. A girl’s face is mutilated with a weed whacker. Somebody burns to death. Flashbacks to the earlier massacre include scenes of a boy with a saw blade lodged in his face and a girl getting stabbed through the neck with a machete. Blood and gore fly everywhere. People get covered in it. It’s a bloody mess.
HOWEVER, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil is made in the spirit of fun, so it plays more like a gory slapstick routine. That’s really the bottom line here. It’s a goof on hillbilly horrors like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes and Wrong Turn. Craig toys with the conventions of the genre like a contrary child. Tucker and Dale aren’t killers; they’re luckless sorts who happen to buy the cabin previously owned by the lunatic behind the “Memorial Day Massacre” 20 years earlier. At the same time, he honors it by including familiar scenarios. He even sets the finale in a sawmill with now-psychotic Chad trying to cut Ally in half.
Labine and Tudyk are good in the title roles. They make a solid comedy team. Dale wants to hook up with Ally while Tucker just wants to make these pesky college kids go away. Bowden does a fine job with her role too. The relationship that develops between Dale and Ally is actually kind of sweet. She’s very accepting of his shortcomings. She can see he’s a nice guy stuck with an unfortunate label. As for the rest of the kids, there’s not that much to say. It’s the usual gang of dumb, horny stereotypes except for them thinking they know how to handle this situation. Based on their ideas and actions, they obviously spent more time watching dopey horror movies than studying. Besides, there is NO situation. Everything that occurs is a result of misinterpretations and misunderstandings. When they see Ally helping Dale dig an outhouse hole, they think the guys are making her dig her own grave. If kids like this are the future, I am genuinely concerned for the planet.
That’s the fun of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. It’s a goofball role-reversal comedy mixed with generous amounts of (CGI) splatter. It’ll often activate the laugh and gag reflexes at the same time. Craig, the son of acclaimed actress Sally Field, shows great promise in his feature debut. It’s a bumpy ride at times, but it’s consistently fun and funny.
