Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010)
Dir: Eli Craig
As a general rule I don’t like horror films… but this is the kind of horror film that I really enjoy!
While on vacation in a secluded cabin, a couple of hillbillies are targeted by a group of college kids and things turn out messily… yup, really!
When it comes to Horror and Suspense, I usually avoid the blood and gore in favor of tension and shocks, but something like this, with buckets of humor and a twist of genius at its core will suit me just fine too! The film inventively plays with the conventions of the genre, in a similar way at times to ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ but with a lot more humor and a little less terror!
I absolutely love how it turns the main roles on their heads, making these two ‘redneck’ cabin dwellers, brilliantly portrayed by Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine, really warm-hearted and lovable while showing the unfortunate teens to be stupid, reckless and completely the cause of their own demise. Especially when you consider that this was released in 2010, at the saturation point of all the Eli Roth-style ‘Torture Porn’, it manages to take the essentially ubiquitous elements of the genre, and inject it with exactly the right tone of comedy to effectively satirize without descending into the depths of low-grade spoof.
Brilliant for watching with friends when a regular horror would be too much, I can see this having long-lasting appeal and will be regarded as a perfect example of how to mess with an overtired genre for generations to come.
NeverKissedAGirl.com 