Routine sitcom humor, nicely wrapped in a gory format.

Rating: 6/10 (30 November 2011)

"Tucker and Dale VS Evil" is basically the long-feature horror movie equivalent of all those pretty lame comedy sitcoms that my mother always watches You know, the ones where every single episode is exactly the same. It goes like this: everything begins with one small and extremely banal misunderstanding, like maybe something that someone has misheard or misinterpreted. Then subsequently, this banal misunderstanding takes on exaggeratedly humongous proportions. People overhear only parts of conversations, draw incorrect conclusions, revert to ancient clichés and suddenly every dialog/monologue is written in an ambiguous style. Admittedly it's rather strange that this derivative and overindulged formula nevertheless resulted in a movie that several hundreds of people have referred to as one of the best horror comedies ever and even upholds a powerful current 7.6/10 score here on IMDb.
I'm certainly not claiming that I didn't like "Tucker and Dale VS Evil", but I definitely think it's overrated. The basic idea to introduce two particularly sympathetic and downright stereotypical West-Virginian hillbillies and have THEM chased by a group of crazed and overly violent city teenagers (instead of vice versa) is undoubtedly original and close to brilliant. Especially with the revival of backwoods horror recently – there are the remakes of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "The Hills Have Eyes" but also new popular franchises like "Wrong Turn" and many others – there are numerous horror that generated a sort of universal fear of yokels. This makes especially the beginning of the movie very funny. The teenagers know all the urban legends and seen all the backwoods slasher movies, so they're petrified of Tucker and Dale during their first encounter at a remote gas station. They, on the other hand, are completely unaware of their horrific image and just act friendly. Their ignorance versus the close-mindedness of the teenagers results in a few hilarious moments. But then the accumulation of coincidences, unfortunate accidents and misunderstandings becomes just too absurd. Also, the gore in combination with slapstick only works in very small portions. Dumb kids impaling themselves or stupidly blowing their own brains out is not that amusing, in fact. Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk give away amiable performances as the titular goody-two-shoes hicks and Katrina Bowden is just too cute as the only tolerant teenager. The rest of the cast forgettable and additional screen-filling.