MasterChugs Theater: ‘Tucker & Dale vs. Evil’

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

That’s the premise behind Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, though a more appropriate analogy might be to ask “what if a banjo is just a banjo?” What if that dirty, unshaven, thickly accented mountain man driving around the beat-up pickup truck with guns and sharp farming implements in the back were just a normal guy? Rationally, it stands to reason that he probably is. For a horror movie, though, that’s a genre-busting notion, and it’s a reversal that the film uses to fantastic comedic effect.

Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine (who we last saw in Reaper) play Tucker and Dale, respectively. They’re two rednecks driving up to their new vacation home for a weekend of beer and fishing. They come into conflict with some college kids camping in their neck of the woods. When they rescue one of the kids after she almost drowns in the lake, the kids peg Tucker and Dale as Deliverance-style murderous hillibillies out to kill them. What follows are a series of unfortunate misunderstandings.

It’s these misunderstandings that serve as the real evil in Tucker & Dale. The fun of the film is that there is no homicidal maniac. Director Eli Craig’s film has more unlikely coincidences and miscommunications than most sitcoms, and it telegraphs its gags just as plainly. But he manages to make it work through a strange alchemy by which two genres that depend on surprise for their effectiveness — horror and comedy — end up benefiting, oddly enough, from seeing each death or laugh coming just before it arrives. No one dies at the hands of a malicious slasher. The gore’s all played for laughs. The kids are living a self-fulfilling prophecy, meeting gruesome ends not because of a maniac but because their own false sense of danger. It’s the classic “don’t judge a book by its cover” story, but that simplicity is part of the charm.You may know as soon as you see Tucker feeding branches into a wood chipper that a college kid is going to end up passing through its maw, but the way in which it happens still elicits both the desired laughs and mild disgust.

There’s so much to love about the characters themselves. Dale thinks it wise to use a sickle as a prop when he tries to hit on women. Every time Tucker suffers a wound he soothes it with the cool embrace of a beer. Tudyk and Labine do a terrific job of going beyond stereotype to find real humanity and worth in their rednecks. There’s something imminently lovable about the both of their performances that I hope this isn’t the last time we see these characters on film. It’s even easy to love the kids — more caricatures than characters, the lead douche pops his collar and takes a puff off his asthma inhaler immediately after expounding on what a badass he is.

By underpinning the mayhem with its stars’ sincere chemistry, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil manages to make a situation with no small amount of grisliness feel anything but mean-spirited. I’ve watched the movie several times despite only having seen a workprint copy, and it’s held up with every viewing. It’s not the strongest comedy I’ve seen this year but it’s oddly the strongest horror film so far. That speaks more to the sad state of horror, given that the film is skewed more towards comedy. More important than either genre however, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil succeeds at being exactly what it promises: a really fun time. It’s easily the best comedy-horror movie in about, oh, 7 years.

That would mean that whatever came out in 2004 was a fantastic example of comedy-horror. We’ll close out the month by taking a look at that next week. Stay tuned.