13 Nights of Shocktober: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and, October becomes the month long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 8: Ready for a relaxing vacation at a cabin in the woods? Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

It’s tough to come up with a new take on a horror movie premise, and even if you had one there’s still no guarantee that the movie will live up to the idea. In an era in which movies are self-aware and parodying their own genre it is great to have a movie come along with an interesting angle on an established premise that is more concerned with being entertaining than with being clever. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is a thoroughly entertaining horror comedy that is also a fun new take on the old premise of a group of college kids who go into the woods and are harassed by rednecks.

The movie starts with a cliché: a group of pretty college students head out into the hills to have what they think will be a fun weekend. Tucker and Dale (Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine) are two sweet and good natured hillbillies that are spending a weekend at Tucker’s new vacation spot, a run-down cabin, also in the hills. They run into the group of college kids (who have just been told the story of a hillbilly murderer from 20 years before) while they are fishing and kids are out swimming. One of college girls, Allison, is startled and hits her head on a rock. Tucker and Dale save her and take her to their cabin to recuperate. Allison is nervous at first but befriends them and helps shy Dale come out of his shell, but her friends think she has been kidnapped. They set out to rescue her.

A lot of the comedy comes from simple but funny misunderstandings : like when Tucker accidentally cuts into a beehive with a chainsaw and waves the chainsaw in panic; the college kids only see Tucker waving a chainsaw, presumably at them. There are similar gags and, though they seem like simple sitcom humor, they work and are very funny. There is in fact a menacing psycho in this movie (Tucker doesn’t seem to notice that new cabin looks like a murderer’s former lair) and a good amount of horror movie blood and violence, but this movie never stops being over the top which keeps it light and enjoyable. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil succeeds at being a horror movie and a comedy and is a fun, not cynical, spin on a genre and genre clichés for which this movie clearly has much affection.