"Tucker and Dale vs Evil" is one of the most original films in a long time, and awesome for it. In the same way that "Shaun of the Dead" posed the question: What would normal London layabouts do in the face of a zombie outbreak? Tucker and Dale asks: What if the villainous hillbillies from slasher movies weren't villainous at all.
And so you have the eponymous Tucker and Dale, two likable red necks who have invested in a dilapidated holiday home, which to them looks like a fixer upper but to the "normal" college students who they run into, looks like Satan's playground.
The mistaken identity continues when the skinny chick from 30 Rock (Katrina Bowden) nearly drowns and Dale (Tyler Labine - the chubby one from Reaper) and Tucker (Alan Tudyk - Wash from Firefly and Pirate Steve from Dodgeball) rescue her. Her idiot friends think that the hillbillies have kidnapped her, and try to stage a rescue, but due to a series of accidents all end up deader than Mel Gibson's career. And this, of course, only makes Tucker and Dale look more evil...
It's a lot of fun, and the escalating death scenes of the college kids pan out like a Final Destination that's played for laughs. The cast are great, and it's nice that although the stars are all recognisable, they're all C-List giving the whole thing more credibility. The film works by inverting the traditional horror conventions, whilst keeping some entertaining scares, some over-the-top gore and lots of laughs.
The perfect example that with a strong central conceit and a good cast you can make a decent movie on a low budget.
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