31 Days of Halloween: Silly Scares Night: A Self-Aware/Hilarious Twist on Horror Tropes

Tucker & Dale vs Evil - Eli Craig - 2010

 

★★★★★-Day 10 of the Nightmare on Film Street 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. Silly scares night. One of my favorite genres. This is an old favorite. Nearly an annual watch. Partner loves it as well. 

Gist is two well-meaning hillbillies, Tucker and Dale, are mistaken for killers by a group of college-aged dipshits. While the bumpkins are on vacation at their dilapidated cabin in the woods, a series of misunderstandings lead the students to believe they are being hunted by roughneck psychopaths. The bumpkins, meanwhile, think the kids are in some kind of suicide cult as attempts to “rescue” their friend Allison results in a series of gruesome accidents.

Alan Tudyk and ­­Tyler Labine star as Tucker and Dale respectively. Tudyk is always fun and his performance in this film is no exception. I mostly thinking of him from this role and as Steve the pirate in Dodgeball which I fucking love. 

Labine, for his part, has this comedic horror lane locked down. He had a solid run in the 2010s, starring in a couple of my favorite shows with Reaper and Deadbeat, but it appears he’s had some health issues in the last few years and taken a little bit of a step back. 

Hoping director Eli Craig gets to make many more movies in the future. As of this writing it just this and another comedy horror flick Little Evil. It’s no Tucker & Dale, but it’s not bad. Has a movie that is supposed to come out next year based on the YA slasher novel Clown in a Cornfield. I am so seeing that flick. 

The college kids all kind of blend together and just there to pad the body count save for the group’s alpha, Chad, and Allison, she’s the one Tucker and Dale “kidnap”, played Katrina Bowden. She is the incredibly hot receptionist in 30 Rock. I have a bit of a weird connection to her. A girl I dated briefly 20 years ago dated her ex-husband before we got together. He is the frontman for this emo band Armor for Sleep. She occasionally talked to him on the phone while we were dating just to make me jealous. I, however, didn’t give a shit. Our relationship was fucked.

Chad, love that the college douche is named Chad, is played by one Jesse Moss. He is the group’s self-appointed leader and the film's main antagonist. He seems like your average frat bro but becomes obviously more mentally deranged as his suppressed psychotic tendencies and prejudices towards hillbillies start coming out. Hadn’t seen him in anything else, but he is great in this. You can tell he is having a good time. 

The film is absolutely spectacular, subverting horror tropes and effectively blending comedy with gory. A fun twist on the typical horror genre, with plenty of laughs and unexpected turns.