A group of teens mistake two backwoods hillbillies for slashers, and one by one fall victim to stupidity.

Rating: 7/10 (12 December 2015)

Over three decades ago, Sean S. Cunningham brought the world Jason Voorhees, the water logged, back woods tromping, machete wielding maniac of the Friday the 13th series. Wearing raggedy clothing, a found hockey mask (in one scene a bag), and only emitting a few grunts here and there, Jason would haunt the grounds of Camp Crystal Lake, dispatching with any horny teen that came within a fifty foot radius of his old watering hole. Jason wasn't bright either, dreadfully mistaking a horny teen for his mother, simply because she wore the same moth infested sweater that she once had. All of these things amount to one of the first "redneck" killers, with the most notable attribute being the fact that he was brain dead, literally.
For the next thirty or so years, the redneck stereotype would be played upon and upped, with the likes of Deliverance, Silence of the Lambs, and Wrong Turn helping pave the way for what would end up being a tremendously enjoyable stereotype to hack and slash its way into our hearts. What Tucker and Dale vs. Evil does effectively is that it plays just about each and every stereotype, then plays the complete opposite of what we have come to expect after all these years of incest and cannibalism.
Tucker and Dale (played by Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine respectively) are just a couple of hayseeds from up and over yonder, looking to renovate their newly purchased "vacation" home in the woods, when they encounter a group of horny, party hungry college co-eds. Tending to their renovations, their fishing rods, and their PBR, Tucker and Dale keep to themselves until Allison (Katrina Bowden) finds herself in need of help, which quickly becomes misconstrued as a kidnapping. What follows soon after is one misunderstanding after another, with hilarious yet deadly results.
As horror/comedies go, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil delivers exactly what one would want from a combination like that, with buckets of blood spilling out just as quickly as the laughs. Dale's fluffy, shy, yet sensitive side dismisses all we have come to understand about the flesh hungry redneck killers of the past, and Tucker's guidance over Dale allows for that pitch perfect "buddy cop" feel. All that we supposedly know about rednecks and everything Tucker and Dale show us provides the blood and the laughs, with the laughs begetting the blood and the blood the laughs.
As each scene transitions into the next, we slowly begin to see that this is Eli Craigs debut film, but its minor editing flaw is one that we immediately forget about as it only brings us the woes of Tucker and Dale even quicker. With chainsaws, machetes, woodchippers, weaponized sticks, and homemade moonshine making pit stops at every kids untimely demise, we are introduced to even more horror movie clichés, yet clichés that break apart clichés, providing perfectly pitched laughs and gore. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is a movie that will repeatedly play in your head after the credits role, causing you to quote the hapless duo even after its short run in theaters is over, and recall the excessive gore well into the next Final Destination release.