Title: Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil

Opens: September 30, 2011. VOD on August 26, 2011

If “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil” is not the funniest take-off on slasher movies in decades, then I’d better get out more often—especially to films broadly considered of the horror genre. Unlike the “Scream” series, which simply plays homage to horror conventions by regularly winking at the audience, e.g. the black guy gets killed first, or the girl who answers the phone will die, “Tucker” treats mass killing for belly laughs, the more gruesome, the funnier. More surprising, this low-budget production is the very first full-length film directed by Eli Craig (his “The Tao of Pong” about an ex-ping pong prodigy’s seeking wisdom is only 22 minutes long) and Morgan Jurgenson (whose resume finds directing experience on four shorts). Here is one film that will make audiences look out for sophomore efforts by the duo, who wrote “Tucker” as well as directing it, a real challenge for them to one-up their debuts this year.

Not only does this satirical grand guignol provide an ample number of belly laughs (after all, being impaled on a tree branch or cut to ribbons on a wood chipper are obvious territory for comedy), but it provides a lesson to us all about prejudice: do not judge people by the way they look, what their backgrounds are, and how much formal education they have. While this is an ensemble production, the movie is anchored by a spot-on performance by Tyler Labine, a thirty-three year old Canadian character actor soon to be seen in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.”

Though the horror begins according to convention when a group of immature college kids take a ride deep into West Virginia’s Appalachia, Craig and Jurgenson upend the formula by making the kids, and not the hillbillies, the aggressors while the inbred mountain people are as sweet as maple syrup. The college brats defer to Chad (Jesse Moss), the young man driving his pals on a school break while joking about the strange-looking characters they meet in what passes for a town. When scantily clad Allison (Katrina Bowden) hits a rock diving in the lake, she is saved and nurtured back to health by Dale (Tyler Labine), who despite his native intelligence is found regularly playing Abbott to his friend Tucker’s (Alan Tudyk) Costello. Because of his appearance and decrepit condition of Tucker and Dale’s excuse for a vacation home, the college kids immediately suspect that he has kidnapped their friend Allison for unnatural purposes.

Back at the shack, Allison, frightened at first but later bonding with Dale as she is herself from a farming background, helps the yokel with some digging. The college kids assume that Dale has forced her to dig her own grave. Through a series of misunderstandings, one kid after another dies in typically horrific ways, each death counting as evidence that Tucker and Dale are evil incarnate. If the killings tend toward the conventional, the dialogue is full of crisp, bright one-liners, making for an ideal midnight show in theaters to be doubtless dominated by the 17-30 year olds. Yet it would be a mistake for moviegoers decades older to miss the fun.

Any sequel will have dig up some new, young actors as all save one of the brats is dead. David Geddes’s wide-lens photography takes place in Calgary and surrounding Alberta woodlands.

Rated R. 89 minutes. (c) 2011 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

Overall – A-