By Daniel Rutledge
Americans rarely get horror/comedy right – while the Brits have Shaun of the Dead and we Kiwis have Braindead, the US has the questionable at best Troma works, a lot of forgettable efforts like Dead and Breakfast and the terrible Scary Movie franchise.
So it was a pleasant surprise to enjoy this wonderful diamond in the rough so much.
Tucker & Dale vs Evil takes the classic horror setup of a group of university students camping in the woods and being killed off by a group of feral hillbillies and flips it on its head. This time, the hillbillies are the good guys and the college kids are evil.
Well, sort of.
Basically a run of unfortunate incidents makes the college kids think the hillbillies are trying to kill them when in fact they’re just misunderstood.
If you’ve watched a lot of horror movies – especially ones with Southern State rednecks as the killers – you’ll get a lot of joy out of seeing how the harmless, sweet-hearted hillbillies inadvertently end up looking like the stereotypical psychotic killers horror movies have made us fear.
While it would be quite difficult to be scared in a movie this funny, there is a fair amount of gore in it to further please genre fans, but not so much as to gross out others too much.
The movie falls apart a little bit in the third act when it kind of writes itself into a hole and does some quite silly things to get out of it.
And although there are moments of absolute hilarity, there are also a few jokes which fell flat for me.
For the most part though, this is a fantastic piece of cinematic fun, especially for horror fans. Recommended.
Three and a half stars.
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Note: This film is playing as part of the World Cinema Showcase - visit the official website for session times and more info.
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