Nice idea, shame about the execution

Rating: 5/10 (18 August 2014)

TUCKER & DALE VS. EVIL is a comic horror film with a twist: the villains are actually the good guys, and vice versa. What starts out as a standard 'hillbilly' horror flick, in which a bunch of vacationing teenagers find themselves at the mercy of a couple of murderous rednecks out in the backwoods, soon turns into a broad spoof of the horror genre as a whole.
The twist is that the rednecks are the good guys and the inevitably gory slayings that occur are a result of accidents and plain bad luck. This premise gives the film some novelty value, but unfortunately it aims at the lowest common denominator for the most part and the humour is obvious and predictable.
It's fair to say that the writing is better than the direction here, because there are some subtle character bits written in amid all the mayhem and destruction. The performances of Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk are both decent, as the guys form a good double act which carries them through the rest of the movie. The deaths are very cheesy and the low budget is always more than apparent, but if you're looking for something different then you might just enjoy this.