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This week I wanted to get one more horror movie in for the Halloween season. After recently watching the excellent supernatural thriller “The Babadook“, I decided to go for something a little lighter. “Tucker and Dale vs Evil” was in my Netflix queue and looked to fit the bill.

In Tucker and Dale vs Evil, you first meet a group of College kids heading out to the Appalachian Hills for a weekend of camping. They are purposefully cliched frat and sorority kids looking to party. On the way they bump into Tucker & Dale who they are more than a little unsettled by. But looks can be deceiving, and once the viewer meets the duo, you realize they are just a couple of well-meaning hillbillies headed out to their newly purchased vacation home (unknown to them, the scene of a past massacre) to have some fun and clean up the place. The two groups cross paths again that night when Dale saves one of the girls from drowning and it is mistaken for a kidnapping. At this point a series of misunderstanding lead to a back and forth between the two groups, all the while the insecure Dale tries to woo the girl he saved as she gets back to health. Helping to lead this confrontation between the two groups is Chad the leader of the College kids who you find out has a certain grudge against people like Tucker and Dale. Just reading this, you might think the movie sounds serious but it’s mostly slapstick dark humor.

The movie plays like a less heavy-handed entry in the “Scary Movie” franchise, getting most of it’s gags playing off classic modern horror movie tropes. The writing for the actual horror scenes wasn’t terribly clever, but it did have it’s moments. The two leads played off of each other pretty well, and that comedic chemistry was about the high point of the movie. The storyline got a little tired for me and I felt it had worn itself out about two thirds of the way through.

Reviewed by: Phillip Lane on October 30, 2015