Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010)

Directed by: Eli Craig | 88 minutes | horror, comedy | Actors: Tyler Labine, Alan Tudyk, Katrina Bowden, Jesse Moss, Philip Granger, Brandon Jay McLaren, Christie Laing, Chelan Simmons, Travis Nelson, Alex Arsenault, Adam Beauchesne, Joseph Allan Sutherland, Karen Reigh, Tye Evans, Bill Baksa

If you have to believe horror films like ‘Wrong Turn’, ‘Cabin Fever’, ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ and ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, then it is not safe in the backcountry of America. Especially not if you are young and beautiful and you are looking forward to a relaxed camping trip with your friends. Behind every tree is a hillbilly with a cleaver, and a wrong turn or a flat tire can cost you dearly. With that movie savvy in mind, it’s no surprise that the students in “Tucker & Dale vs Evil” get a little nervous when they bump into jackass Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) at a remote gas station. The fact that the men have just bought a chainsaw and a scythe and are behaving strangely in front of female beauty does not inspire confidence either. At first sight a tried and tested recipe for unadulterated hillbilly horror, were it not for the fact that everything in ‘Tucker & Dale vs Evil’ is slightly different than you would expect.

Debut director Eli Craig got the idea for ‘Tucker & Dale’ when he was stuck in a traffic jam and was diverted through a small village. The recently graduated filmmaker thought it might be fun to turn around the cliché of the lost student. What if, as a righteous hillbilly, you were ambushed by a herd of young academics? It’s a simple concept that would get boring in the wrong hands, but in ‘Tucker & Dale vs Evil’ it’s a golden find. Craig doesn’t invert convention by unleashing some murderous fraternity balls in the countryside, instead introducing two parallel storylines. The first follows Tucker and Dale, two simple souls with golden hearts who have just bought a ramshackle log cabin in the woods. While fishing, they save Allison, one of the students they met at the gas station, from drowning. The second storyline follows the students, who see their fellow student being hoisted into a boat by the two.

The students are quick with their conclusions. The inbred kinks have kidnapped their friend and her death warrant has been signed. One of the youngsters poses as a leader and mobilizes the rest to mount a rescue. Unfortunately, the group proceeds so carelessly that one after the other dies, which only increases the panic among the survivors. Meanwhile, Tucker and Dale watch with increasing amazement at all those unfortunate accidents. This shifting perspective gives you a constant smile, which gets wider as more bloody and slapstick-like situations arise. “Are you okay?” Tucker asks concerned to a young man who has just accidentally jumped into his wood chipper. Humor and horror go hand in hand, it turns out. The only thing you can say about ‘Tucker & Dale’ is that the dialogues could have been a bit funnier and that Craig shoots his gun too early, causing the film to sag a bit towards the end.

They’re minor niggles in a horror comedy that’s ten times more fun than you’d expect based on the trailer. The film playfully pokes fun at various horror clichés, pays tribute to genre classics and undermines the expectations and prejudices of the cinema visitor. For example, the boy who would be the painted hero in a regular horror film is here exposed as a paranoid bastard, the stupid Dale turns out to have unexpected qualities, the drowning person is not at all as cool and spoiled as she initially seems and actually hangs there. some romance in the air. Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine make fun of as well-wishers who see their fishing vacation brutally disrupted, but a special kudos to Katrina Bowden, who shines a ray of sunshine as the sweet-natured Allison. With such a fun concept and such endearing characters, it’s almost impossible not to get ‘Tucker & Dale vs Evil’ to your heart. The hillbillies of the world can walk the streets with their heads held high again.