Tucker and Dale vs Evil

This is one of those rare examples of a funny horror film that actually is funny. Never got a release here in UK which it should have had and so after really good reviews in the DVD mags here, i rented it.What really made it entertaining for me , a lover of films where teens going to meet their end by nasty guys who live in the woods , is that this film turns the whole idea on it's head by having the backwoods guys being caring and really good, and the teens getting the wrong end of the stick by causing all the deaths due to accidents. The two lead performers bounce off each other beautifully with a cracking good script which for a comic send up is so important.The film looks ace and special effects are above standard. This will become a cult film and for all my 60 years of loving slice and dice movies, i can really say this is really worth your time,watch with some beers and enjoy.

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.

Eli Craig did a masterful job in presenting the best horror comedy since "Suck."

Playing on the tried and true "Flinstones Plot" of miscommunication that may drive some viewers crazy, Craig brings the gore and the humor with great special effects and wonderful acting. Best of all, of course, the story is solid with an interesting and poignant antagonist development that is extremely impressive.

Better still, the laughs aren't cheap and silly.

And if you live in the southern United States and hate how "southern folk", "backwoods families" and "hillbillies" are exploited for horror purposes, you'll love this tremendous twist on such a overused and ill-conceived cliché.

This is one of the greatest horror comedies ever presented on film.

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 a wonderful, light hearted, enjoyable movie, with a great cast and a great story, you'll find yourself in stitches at the scenarios in this movie. How some the characters end up dying is just priceless, and our Tucker and Dale justifying what is going on as logically as they can. I just loved tucker and dale, the actors are just amazing, and seeing Alan in any project is always a welcome delight. A strong recommendation if your looking for a good flick to check out, get some good popcorn in, sit back and enjoy!