by Raven Kross:
A while ago, a visited my aunt’s house for our annual scary movie night, and one of the movies we decided on was Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. Set in a lush forest that is every outdoor enthusiast’s dream, the movie is about some preppy college kids who bump into a pair of rednecks on their way to their newly bought vacation home. While swimming in the lake, one of the college girls bumps her head, and Dale, the bumbling but well-meaning country bumpkin, dives in to rescue her. Her friends believe that he is kidnapping her and run away. This begins a chain of unfortunate coincidences, with the students dying off and blame falling on Tucker and Dale.
The first thing that attracted me to this movie was the fact that it’s meant to be a parody of horror. Everyone is an exaggerated version of typical horror movie characters, from the valley girl who can’t live without her cell phone to the horny douche bag, complete with popped collar. The plot is an obvious twist on the usual camping-in-the-woods scenario, but in this instance, rather than the villains having tragic back stories that make the viewer sympathetic to them, they actually aren’t villains at all. The whole movie makes fun of itself, but it is also a wonderfully executed production with a genuinely well-thought-out storyline, which is more than can be said for many actual horror movies out there.
From a film producer’s perspective, not only was this movie very entertaining, it was extremely well made. Rarely did I notice a shot that was out of place or a detail that made me question its plausibility. One thing I did notice, however, was that although the blood and violence looked very real, there were some special effects that seemed out of place. For example, at one point a boy accidentally dives into a wood chipper, leaving only his legs attached to the stringy remains of his torso. When Tucker and Dale dragged the body out, it looked more like a pair of cloth mannequin legs, as if the bones had suddenly decided to stop working. I realize that finding authentic and affordable severed limbs in this economy is a challenge, but I was not impressed.
Other than that, there was very little that I disagreed with. Though I found the plot twist near the end to be a bit far fetched (as you get to know me, you will discover that I REALLY love good plot twists), I suppose it went well enough with the rest of the story, so I give that a solid B. Besides the whole leg situation, I found much of the gore to be extremely realistic. I liked that they didn’t hide the violence through brief glimpses or broken shots; they gave you full-on shots of mangled, bloodied corpses. At one point, one of the characters survives an explosion and emerges with blackened, putrefying skin stained with mottled shades of scarlet blood and several areas of white where the bone was showing through, much of the face burned away. The special effects crew did NOT hold back.
If you’re a fan of classic serial killer horror, this film is definitely for you. Every element–the plot, the characters, the soundtrack, the setting–is making fun of those horror fundamentals we all know, but in such a way that the movie becomes a prime example of the very thing it is parodying, thus transcending levels of irony incomprehensible to the average human mind. Even if you’re just a normal comedy fan and can stomach graphic violence, it’s an excellent watch.
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