"Oh hidy ho officer, we've had a doozy of a day. There we were minding our own business, just doing chores around the house, when kids started killing themselves all over my property."
-Tucker, after pulling half a college kid out of a wood chipper.
Stop me if you've heard this before. A group of unusually attractive and God-awfully annoying college idiots go camping in the woods in an area with a history of crazy hillbilly murders near a creepy cabin where some creepy hillbillies live. An overly CGI bloodbath ensues.
Okay, yes. That is basically every film in the hillbilly horror subgenre of the slasher flick ever. But Tucker and Dale vs. Evil isn't the average slasher film. For one thing, it's a comedy. The second is that here the hillbillies are the good guys.
Our protagonists are Dale and Tucker, two hillbillies on the way to Tucker's recently purchased "vacation home": a run down old cabin in the middle of the woods that once belonged to a serial killer. Despite the human bones strung around like children's mobiles, the newspaper clips pasted on the walls about past murders, and the fact that the entire cabin screams "here there be murder," Dale and Tucker are thrilled by the house and completely oblivious to the house's history and creepiness, declaring it to be a "fixer upper" and wondering if the past owner was an archaeologist. They are there to fix up the place, drink beer, and go fishing in the nearby lake.
The only problem is that there's a group of the aforementioned breed of super annoying college kids camping in the woods by the cabin, and all of them have seen way too many slasher films. Misunderstanding compounds misunderstanding, and when one of the girls hits her head on a rock while skinny dipping, and when Tucker and Dale (who were fishing) pull her out of the water and save her life, the other kids immediately assume Tucker and Dale are killer, kidnapping hillbillies and freak the fuck out.
Thus begins a hilariously bloody comedy of errors with all the kids ineptly trying to rescue their friend (Allison) who doesn't need to be rescued from Tucker and Dale who don't understand why all these crazy college kids are attacking each other and themselves.
Tucker is the cleverer out of the two protagonists and is the buttmonkey of the story, receiving basically every nonlethal injury the movie has to offer. Dale is played by the dude who was the best friend on Reaper and is the one with self-esteem issues and trouble talking to girls. The two have apparently known each other since they were kids.
On the college kids side of things, we have Allison who befriends Tucker and Dale. She's a psych major who wants to be a therapist.
Then there's Chad who right out of the starting gate has a possessive crush on Allison and a seething hatred of hillbillies. He leads the attack on Tucker and Dale.
And then there's- uh. Well there's the blond girl who smokes a lot. And the pragmatic black girl. And the black guy who DOESN'T die right away. And the kid with the truck. And the skinny white guy. And- uh. Maybe that one other guy? I think?
Yeah, the rest are all just your average horror movie cannon fodder characters, but that's okay. Cannon fodder has its place. They have one job, and they do it well.
The movie is hilarious. If you have even the slightest passing knowledge of horror movies, you will love this movie. There's some blood and guts, but not that much (especially when compared to actual slasher films) and the bits that are there are so CGI looking it's funny, and are often followed by something humorous that immediately dulls any shock.
This movie is on Netflix. Go watch it.