Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

The name of this flick alone is enough to scroll on by to other more aptly named movie titles, but hold up for just a second and hear me out! A strange love-child genre between slasher and comedy, Tucker and Dale is lumped into a cheesy category of movies that shrivel and wilt under cheap jokes and unoriginal story telling. But unlike other flicks of this category, Tucker and Dale makes use of cleverness to play off of a worn down cliché, offering a deep and—dare I say it?—heartwarming story.

Plot: Let’s start with the cliché. A group of college kids hit the roads for a weekend camping trip in the woods. Far from cellular service and society, deep in a mysterious forest, we can already guess that something is going to go horribly wrong. Enter Tucker and Dale, two redneck hill-billies  also looking for a relaxing weekend out under the sun. The creepy pair strike fear in the eyes of the students, and a fateful meeting between the groups sets into motion a grisly chain of events. But this is where Tucker and Dale spins off on its own tangent, flipping the tables on the audience, and attacking the core philosophy that has marked every slasher film ever made. Without giving too much away, in short, not all is as it seems as bodies fly into wood-chippers, are run through stakes, or are chain-sawed into halves.

Why You Passed It Up: You’ve seen it before: the eerie forest, the crazed mountain folk, naïve girls in cleavage shirts, and gore, gore, gore. If you’re into the slasher genre, you enjoy all of these things, but this one just didn’t sound high quality enough to grab your attention. And the name of the movie? A toddler could dream up a better title than that. Even if you were looking for a good laugh, slasher movies are never that funny, even if humorous intentions were involved. Today though, I present to you a movie you never should have passed up, an action-packed comedy that revamps the lost-in-the-woods theme.

Fever Rating (100-105): 104

At a burning 104, Tucker and Dale tops the list of the movies no one watches. Overcoming a cheesy title, an overdone plot, and a low budget, Tucker and Dale offers a story of redemption and the problems of physical judgment. Miscommunication is the structure of Tucker and Dale, with both sides failing to healthily meet in the middle and here the other side out. In a unique twist, we find the ‘deranged’ hicks to be the misunderstood protagonists, who are only trying to help. Hysterical character development coupled with grim deaths mixes into a flavorful film, carrying it’s message of never judging a book by its cover in a lighthearted and yet gruesome manner. For an evening’s enjoyment that will leave you satisfied and chuckling until the end, scroll back to what you’ve been passing up: Give ol’ Tucker and Dale a chance.