Movie Review: "Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil", or How Two Redneck Death Machines Saved My Saturday

Tucker and Dale vs Evil
2010, Rated R
Written by Eli Craig and Morgan Jurgenson
Directed by Eli Craig
Starring Tyler Labine, Alan Tudyk, Katrina Bowden, and Jesse Moss

Is there anything worse than being in a funk on a Saturday? I mean other than sitting in prison for a crime you didn't commit, or being physically and psychologically abused by someone you love, or being in a car accident, or... But I digress. The point is, besides really terrible things, is there anything worse than being in a funk on a Saturday?

I'm in a funk and it's Saturday, and at this place and time there is nothing worse than being in a funk on a Saturday.

I've been moping around the house in my Spider Man pajama pants and long underwear (the former over the latter, for warmth) since noon, and no matter how much I know I should get to work on my half-finished deck and my half-finished blog and my half-finished novel, I just can't bring myself to do more than sit on the couch, incessantly refreshing my Twitter and Facebook feeds in the hopes that someone will mention me.

Did I say already how much being in a funk on a Saturday sucks?

"If you're just going to sit around, we could at least watch a movie together. You know that's the only thing that cheers you up."

My wife and her eternal struggle to drag me up, out of my increasingly regular fits of lethargy and depression. Pity her, people. Pity her.

"There's only one movie I want to watch right now, and I know for a fact that you don't want to watch it," I say from my prone position on the couch, where I've been occupying all of the prime real estate for the last six hours.

"Just put it on. I'll watch it."

Wow. I must be worse than I thought. She's desperate enough to give me cinematic carte blanche. On any other day I would refuse, knowing how my selection would pain her. Knowing that, with me depressed, there is no way she can walk out halfway through the movie after promising she'd watch it with me. On any other day I'd let her off the hook. But it's Saturday and I'm in a funk, and there is nothing worse than that.

I'd first seen the trailer for Tucker and Dale vs Evil when it was on demand last summer. Needless to say, as a low-budget horror fan and devotee of almost anything Magnet Releasing puts out, the premise of a sweetheart pair of rednecks who are mistaken by a group of college kids for backwoods maniacs grabbed my interest with a blood-spattered fist before the trailer was half over, and has refused to let go ever since. I'd have watched it already, but financial circumstances being what they are, my money-to-spend-on-pay-per-view-movies-that-are-still-in-theaters-and-I-know-will-hit-Netflix-within-a-week-of-coming-out-on-DVD budget is exactly $0.00. But now it is on Netflix, and it's the only thing I've wanted to watch for nearly a week, but couldn't find anybody to watch it with. Now my poor wife has put herself on the line, and I simply cannot stop myself. Remember how I told you to pity her? Yeah. Do that.

If you read my review of The Foot Fist Way, you'll have some idea of how well my wife's and my sense of humor gel. Well, our tastes in low-budget horror are about as compatible. The poor lady has no idea what she's in for.

Tucker and Dale vs Evil does for redneck psychopath horror what Scream did for masked killer teen slashers in the '90s, and I say that as high praise, not criticism. Yes, the Scream franchise was ultimately a victim of its own success, but any story that can take the well trodden formula of a genre, turn it on its ear, and have fun doing it is okey-dokey-artichokey by me. I love good satire as much as I love good horror, and hybrids, well executed, tend to be greater than the sum of their parts.

As we're introduced to our stable of post-adolescent victims I can almost feel my wife's eyes roll from just outside my field of vision. This is just the oh-so-familiar type of low-budget horror staple that drives her up a wall. I can hardly blame her. The car full of obvious cannon fodder has been done more than Debbie when she hit Dallas, but that's the point. You have to know the formula if you're going to lampoon the formula, and the filmmakers clearly know the formula.

When Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) - two rednecks out to do some relaxing and casual improvement of a recently purchased vacation home - cross paths with our victim menagerie, Dale makes the mistake of approaching one of the attractive young coeds (Katrina Bowden) and, in true psychotic hillbilly fashion, inadvertently scares the living crap out of her and all of her friends, thus setting into motion everything that follows.

What follows is a long string of filmmaking decisions, every one of which was right. The acting is heads and tails above 90% of the low-budget horror out there. The writing is tight, smart, and funny. The director clearly has a vision and knows how to keep things moving, even when it's time to step back and let the characters get to know each other. The laughs, the tension, the combining of the two; it's all there. I suppose it could just be that I was so low before the movie started that anything capable of lifting my spirits would feel like mainlining liquid happiness, but the movie is just flat out fun.

College students' fear of redneck psychos leads to inadvertent bloodbath is a great setup no matter how you slice it, if you'll pardon the barely non-gratuitous pun; but subtext is something most modern horror filmmakers are sadly ignorant of, and I'm happy to say it's on full display here. That such a ridiculous story could have such depth - exploring themes like class warfare and the nature of prejudice being the result of unrecognized self-loathing - elevates Tucker and Dale above the level of a simple horror/comedy and into the realm of quality satire. I hate the term "transcends genre", but in this case it just fits.

Sadly, it's mostly wasted on my wife. Not that she doesn't get it. She can see all the elements at play, they're just not having the desired effect. It's not her fault. That's just the nature of art. Two people look at the same piece. One sees a masterpiece. One sees a waste of ninety minutes. It's all subjective, but that's the human experience. A long, unbroken string of subjective events. It was sure nice of her to sit and experience it with me, though. And despite the fact that, after the movie ended, the cloud of fatigue and apathy settled once more around my head, for an hour and a half or so I forgot about all that and just had some good, old-fashioned fun. That, for me anyway, makes it time well spent.