Playing with the slasher genre for laughs

Rating: 8/10 (18 July 2011)

Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) are a couple of good friends who buy themselves a rundown cabin by a lake in the West Virginia mountains for holiday home where they can go fishing. At a gas station they meet up with bunch of rude obnoxious college kids whose ideas of country people come from watching too much Deliverance or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The college kids flee in panic after misunderstanding Dale's clumsy attempt at a friendly greeting. Misunderstandings continue when Tucker and Dale come across the college kids skinny dipping in the lake by their cabin while they are out fishing. One girl, Alison (Katrina Bowden), is startled when she sees them and slips on a rock and bangs her head. Dale rescues her from drowning but when they attempt to alert to the accident the other college kids they flee in panic, believing their friend has been captured. Unaware of this Tucker and Dale return to cabin with Alison to tend to her injuries
The following day while Alison realises how they have misjudged the situation and gets friendly with Dale, her friends are outside planning to rescue her spurred on by her hillbilly hating boyfriend Chad (Jesse Moss). This leads to a series of hilarious gory fatal accidents caused by stupidity and panic. Tucker and Dale just can't seem to stop these idiots killing themselves.
This is film is a lot of fun. It is definitely playing with tropes of the backwoods slasher genre, where the college kids are so conditioned by prejudices based on ideas of country people from these slasher films that they behave like they are in one and cause their own deaths by reactions based on their biased assumptions. It is a great piece of black comedy and that is down to believable performances from Tudyk and Labine as well a really funny script.
Rating 7/10