Sundance Midnight Memories: TUCKER & DALE VS. EVIL (2010)

[Welcome back, readers! With the 2017 Sundance Film Festival beginning this week, we thought it would be fun to take a look back at some of the great midnight movies that have come out of the fest over the years. Be sure to check back here each day this week for more Midnight Memories from Daily Dead!]

“Oh, hidy ho, officer. We have had a doozy of a day.”

I love horror of all kinds, but if I were to pick my favorite sub-genre, it would definitely be horror comedy. Maybe it’s because I’m a big fan of having fun with the genre, as opposed to just pushing myself in order to say I “survived” more challenging material, so anytime a director can cleverly combine thrills, chills, and chuckles into one experience, you can always count me in. Such is the case with Tucker & Dale vs Evil, which made its blood-soaked premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 22nd, 2010.

Co-written and directed by Eli Craig, Tucker & Dale vs Evil follows two groups, the first being our titular hillbillies who are heading out to Morris Lake, and the second a gaggle of college kids looking to go camping out in the forest. Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) are gearing up for a big weekend of fishing, drinking beer, and getting to work on repairing their new vacation home. On the way, they all cross paths at a gas station, and Dale is immediately taken by Allison (Katrina Bowden), but his surly appearance and inability to converse with the ladies gives Allison and her friends the impression that Tucker and Dale are two uneducated and creepy hillbillies that mean to harm them.

After an accident causes Allison to end up under the care of Dale and his buddy, her college chums can only think the worst about her “captors” and set out to kill them both, but they keep falling victim to various untimely deaths before they can enact their ill-conceived revenge on the unassuming hillbillies, resulting in a hysterical, unforgettable, and gruesome comedy of errors that consistently turns the tables on everything horror fans have always enjoyed about this sub-genre in particular.

Here's a little-known fact about yours truly: I come from a family of hillbillies. My mom, the youngest of 13 children, was born and raised in the hills of West Virginia and I spent all of my vacations as a child there. So, as you can imagine, Tucker & Dale pretty much hit every nail on the proverbial head for me with an approach that’s both insightful and humorous with its intentions.

There’s an overt comedy style to the material here, but it’s the more subtle moments in Tucker & Dale that really make it soar. It’s obvious from the very first time that the college kids and our titular characters encounter each other that Craig is interested in setting a certain tone, but rather than giving us something we’ve seen countless times before, he continuously blows our expectations to smithereens by deconstructing all of the backwoods horror tropes without ever directly poking fun at them. The best parodies are the ones that inject fun into, and not ridicule, a familiar premise, and it’s evident that Craig clearly understood that when working on Tucker & Dale vs Evil.

And while the horror comedy benefits from an incredibly nuanced script by Craig and co-writer Morgan Jurgenson, it’s the fantastically funny cast that makes these characters into something more than the caricatures they initially seem to be at the start of the film. At the center of it all are Tudyk and Labine, who share a palpable chemistry, making them instantaneously likable. Maybe they aren’t the most “refined” gentlemen, but their friendship and devotion makes it easy to emotionally invest in their plight against the aggressive co-eds.

Also, considering this was one of the first opportunities that both actors had to embrace leading man status, both Tudyk and Labine rise to the occasion beautifully here, especially Labine, whose character Dale has probably the best arc in the entire film. I get a big goofy grin on my face whenever I think about his character coming full circle by the finale of Tucker & Dale, and Bowden (who I enjoyed on 30 Rock) does a great job of making Allison something more than another damsel in distress—she’s thoughtful, funny, kind-hearted, and the kind of gal worth rescuing time and time again.

As far as Allison’s friends go, their pack is led by stereotypical alpha male douche Chad (Jesse Moss), who we watch turn into the real monster of this story by the time the third act of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil rolls around. Moss, who is perhaps given the meatiest and campiest role of the entire film, is just balls-out insane, and the more he chews the scenery with every line he delivers, the more I love (and hate-love) his performance in this (the tea scene in particular was a nice way to still humanize Chad, even though at that point, all you want to do is punch his stupid, smug, vengeance-seeking face).

On paper, the concept behind Tucker & Dale vs. Evil seems one-note and feels like something that would be better explored in a short film than for almost a full 90 minutes. But Craig and his cast sustain this concept into a clever, funny, and endearing experience that also has a timeless message on its mind—judge not, lest ye be judged—and maybe we’d all be better off as human beings if we would just stop and try to understand those different from us, rather than just attacking them or assuming the very worst.

While it’s a confidently made horror comedy with an endless rewatch value (no joke, it’s a movie I’ve shared with at least a dozen friends and even my mom, who doesn’t like horror movies anymore), the thing that makes Tucker & Dale vs. Evil so special to me is that at its core, it’s a celebration of having a dream and pursuing it no matter what—whether it’s owning your own vacation home or finding your soul mate—and that’s an idea that is always worth celebrating.

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