Mistaken Identity Leads To Sublime Slaughter In Tucker & Dale

You’ve got everything you need for a quick horror flick in Tucker & Dale vs Evil: an especially idiotic bunch of teenagers on their way to the woods for a camping trip and a couple of crackpot, backwater rednecks with no people skills and a bunch of sharp objects lying around their home.

For a few minutes, you think you know where this movie is going and the next minute you’re about to dismiss the movie as crap when all of a sudden Tucker (Alan Tudyk) agitates a beehive and runs away with chainsaw in hand. The scared, stupid teenagers think a crazed redneck is out to kill them, but as the kids run away one of them simply runs into a protruding branch and he’s dead with a tree branch in his chest.

I’ve never seen a movie where the crazed rednecks didn’t do any killing; much less have I seen such an unlucky group of teenagers all committing accidental suicides.

Tucker and Dale (Tyler Labine) don’t even have time to scratch their heads as another teen tries to strike Dale while he’s working the wood-chipper only to land head-first into the machine and leave Dale bloodied and clueless about this gruesome suicide craze in the woods.

There is no explanation for the deaths but the timing and screenplay let you dismiss the phenomenon as bad-timing meets bad-luck.

I didn’t think the deaths were “conveniently” placed either. The freak accident part of the movie is indeed the joke and as the viewer you’re actually the only one that knows what’s going on.

Tucker and Dale are good-hearted, hard-working, blue-collar hillbillies. Leave it to stupid teenagers to peg the rednecks as crazies and then appropriately got themselves killed.

In the end, the real victims were Tucker and Dale who would have had to clean the bloody mess on their property all because the teens were too stoned to knock on the door. Instead, they literally get themselves killed.