“Tucker and Dale vs. Evil” good horror spoof

A short and sweet horror comedy, “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil” is to hillbilly backwoods killers as “Shaun of the Dead” is to zombies.

How many times has a horror movie opened with a group of college kids ending up in some place creepy?  Well, “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil” turns that set-up on its head.

The movie follows a couple of loveable hillbillies, Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) as they head out to Tucker’s new vacation home, a cabin in the woods.  The two men cross paths with a group of college kids stocking up for a camping trip to the mountains of West Virginia.  When the kids see Tucker and Dale, they assume based on their plaid shirts and overalls that the two are the typical possible backwoods killers.  When Dale tries to talk to one of the hot girls in the group, he is following Tucker’s advice to smile and laugh, which comes off as crazy.  It doesn’t help that Dale is randomly carrying a scythe.  Dale slinks away and the groups go their separate ways.

When Tucker and Dale arrive at the vacation cabin, the place looks like the usual creepy cabin in the middle of nowhere.  The previous owner left behind newspaper clippings pinned on the wall and a mobile made of animal bones.  The two hillbillies decide to go fishing when they happen on the college group again.  In the meantime, the kids have decided to go skinny-dipping.  Tucker and Dale pause when they see one of the girls, Allison (Katrina Bowden) strip down to her underwear.  Dale yells at Tucker for being a peeping tom and Allison, surprised, falls into the water, hitting her head on the way.  The two men paddle their boat over to her and save her from drowning.  Of course, the rest of the college kids see this and think the two men are kidnapping her.  Thus begins the battle of the backwoods between the innocent rednecks and the college preps.

This is a fun movie for those who enjoy a good spoof and know the tropes of horror movies.  Everyone but Tucker and Dale act as if they are in a horror movie.  The college kids pour out of a crap SUV like it’s a clown car, numbering eight in total, though most of them are just cannon fodder.  The alpha male of the group, Chad (Jesse Moss), with his popped-up collar, takes advantage of the situation and sets everything in motion.  But as the college kids wage war, a series of accidents end in their deaths.  Tucker and Dale don’t know what to make of this mass “suicide” as kids fall into wood chippers, stake themselves or misfire a gun, to name but a few comic deaths.

Tudyk – a talented comic actor – plays the smarter hillbilly Tucker and tries to make sense of all these crazy teens.  Labine is the idiot savant Dale and he plays dumb well.

“Tucker and Dale vs. Evil” had a limited run in U.S. theaters but it is now available on Netflix streaming and Redbox.