Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010)

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

It’s hard to get more Friday Night Drive-Iney than a movie involving chainsaws, skinny dipping teens, wood chippers, and a cabin in the woods.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil is a bobble headed nod to Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and all the best and worst slasher films of the 80s - with a twist that is original and entertaining enough for the clichés to be fun and the gore to be tolerable.

The movie kicks off with a car full of good looking CATs (college aged teens) from Crystal Lake Central Casting stopping at a West Virginia gas station, where they encounter a pain of seemingly strange and potentially menacing backwoods ruffians named Tucker (Tyler Labine from New Amsterdam) and Dale (Alan Tudyk - “Wash” from Firefly)

The groups go their separate ways for the moment and we, the attentive audience, discover that both Tucker and Dale are actually incredibly nice guys, heading to Dale’s new vacation home - a run down cabin in the woods. Through a series of misunderstandings, the CATs come to believe that Tucker and Dale are serial killers, intent on making them their latest victims. Things fall into the woodchipper pretty quickly, spitting out a gory - if generally funny - story.

It’s possible to go highbrow in analyzing this movie and talking about stereotypes, relative truth, and the distorting influence of media on perception…but…nah…that’s not where director Eli Craig was going. Craig was aiming for a fun flick that played on tropes in a way that The Cabin in the Woods (2011) would do masterfully a year later, while keeping things as light as a story involving dismemberment and casual mutilation allows.

Slasher movies are not our thing. I watched Friday the 13th when it was first in the theaters and left more disturbed than frightened or entertained. And Tucker and Dale has more F-13 gore and violence than I care for, but they make it work, in no small part due to the absolute likability of Labine and Tudyk and their more or less realistic confusion and horror at the insanity that unfolds around them.

If you want a truly trope-busting experience hold off for The Cabin in the Woods, but for a fun warm up we recommend checking out Tucker and Dale vs. Evil HERE.

Three out of Five Hatchets.

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