A quite decent little subversion of the standard ‘modern horror’ tropes, ‘Tucker and Dale Vs Evil’ is basically ‘Cabin in the Woods’ by way of ‘Abbot and Costello’. And I have ALL the time for those kind of shenanigans.

The film follows Tucker and Dale, two of the worlds unluckiest hillbillies, as they head out into the sticks after purchasing a log cabin that’s to become their new holiday home. Unfortunately for them, a group of college folks are also heading out into the woods on a camping trip and through a series of unfortunate misunderstandings, the college kids are lead to believe that Tucker and Dale (the softest, kindest hillbillies seen since Jethro) are infact the murderous backwater sort, and through a series of even more unfortunate events the college kids, generally in a blind panic, end up accidentally killing themselves, while Tucker and Dale try to keep the peace and untangle this ever escalating predicament.

and i’ve gotta say, while this one didnt give me any MAJOR belly laughs, I really enjoyed it’s tone and pacing. In the age of ‘Scary movie’ and other horror parody flicks, its so easy to play stupid humour to the lowest common denominator. But theres some ‘Smart person, stupid humour’ embedded in this thing, and it’s genuinely a delight to watch a film that appreciates its audiences time as much as this thing does.

There a pretty even distribution of laughs throughout, they work a good range of humour from witty jibes to slapstick and all the flavours in between, the pacings pretty breakneck with a wickedly dark tone. As I mentioned, while the humour didnt quite truely win me over. I chuckled a few times and had a good time with this thing all the same.

Its got a clean three act structure that transitions pretty effortlessly, but for my money the biggest reason to see this is the really well handled subversion of the traditional ‘hillbillies vs city folk’ dynamic. Here, the hillbillies genuinely did nothing wrong, but the kids preset prejudice and panicked attitude around them sets the city folk up to be the badguys almost by accident, while putting Tucker and Dale firmly in the ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!?’ firing line.

That subversion I feel works really well here and makes this quite the unique viewing experience, Im not going to lie, theres nothing earthshatteringly groundbreaking to be found with this one. But it works a good range of emotion, tonally it’s on the level, it keeps good pace and timing ending just around the point i’d personally had my fill.

The direction and cine are to studio standard, with decent composition, a solid attempt at styalisation, some nice homages to movies like ‘The Evil Dead’ and ‘Cabin in the Woods’, I was a bit dissapointed at the lack of colour usage here, with this being quite a bloody picture, it would have been nice to see the reds really pop here. But, with that being said 2010 was the age of ‘brown and sludgey’ coloured horror films, so I understand why they went for the washed out look ultimately.

The cast are all utterly delightful and perfectly aware of the kind of movie they’re making, leading to some really solid performances that nail exactly what this kind of movie needs tonally, they’re VERY animated, utilize props and set spaces well, and most importantly, they come across as sincere, and at no point does it feel phoned in.

I had a quite enjoyable time with ‘Tucker and Dale Vs Evil’ its incredibly hard to get the comedic tone of horror comedy about right, but I feel with this one, they’ve just about managed it. its got a studio grade look to it and it works a good range of horror to humour, so theres going to be at least one gag for everyone. While I wouldnt personally say it was a laugh out loud feature. It came across as ‘plucky’ to me, and I appreciated it’s tone for that.

Definitely worth checking at least once, I could easily see this one entering my rotation in future Halloweens!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/tucker-and-dale-vs-evil/