Night of the Living Hillbillies

Movies: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is a one-joke movie, but what a hilarious joke it is! Parodying all those movies where dumb, privileged teenagers (and adults, in the case of Deliverance) get lost in the woods, only to be brutally murdered by inbred yokels, Tucker and Dale takes this trope and turns it on its ear. In this movie, the hillbillies are nice, decent guys and the college students camping in the woods are slaughtered by their own ignorance.


Tucker and Dale is sly and, well, I guess you could call it "meta". The college kids in the movie assume that Tucker and Dale are mentally deficient killers because they've seen enough horror movies about college kids in the woods to know that that's just how it works. If there are rednecks in the woods, popular culture has taught us that they must be mentally deficient killers.

But in this case, Tucker and Dale are just slightly more rural gentleman. When they see comely Allison fall off a rock and conk her head during a bout of skinny-dipping, they row their boat out to save her. Allison's friends see them hauling her into the boat and assume they must be kidnapping her--so they do what any sensible people would do: run away, refuse to call the police (because calling the police never works in the movies, so why bother?), and plot to save her themselves. A series of misunderstandings follow, which lead to the funny and grotesque deaths of the college students.

This movie proves that to assume makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me"--and sometimes that ass winds up in a wood chipper.

Going back to my first point, as funny as Tucker and Dale is, it's ultimately one-note. By the time we get to the final act, in which the true villain--Chad, the preppy psycho and alpha male leader of the group--ties poor Allison to one of those moving buzz saw things, we've already gotten the joke, and the movie has little to offer except the inevitable conclusion in which evil is vanquished and the hero (in this case, the bearish sweetheart Dale) gets the girl.

More entertaining than Attack the Block but less substantial than Shaun of the Dead, Tucker and Dale vs, Evil is the latest in the growing genre of horror movie spoofs and proves to be a fun (and not *too* bloody) night at the movies.

3.5 out of 5 stars