To be frank with you, I should have been a little more generous to “Tucker & Dale vs. Evil”, which is still a hilarious mix of horror and comedy although more than 10 years passed since it came out. When I watched it for the first time, I gave it 2.5 stars just because it begins to lose some of its comic momentum during its second half, but, what do you know, it remains in my mind much longer than expected, and the movie can still make me chuckle a lot more than once when I revisited it yesterday.

The movie is basically a one-joke comedy, but it is quite hilarious for how it puts some comic twist on many familiar genre elements. Around the beginning of the story, we are introduced to a bunch of young people going to some remote forest area by their vehicle, and there are surely several bad signs around them. First, they encounter a couple of hillbillies on the road, who look rather disturbing as passing by their vehicle. Second, they stop by a local gas station/store, whose name clearly signals something bad to happen sooner or later. Third, they encounter those two hillbillies again, who look all the more suspicious to them for an understandable reason.

However, to our big amusement, these two hillbillies, Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) are actually pretty nice dudes, though they are not so smart enough to present themselves well in front of these young strangers they happen to come across twice. They simply come for having a weekend vacation at an old and shabby cabin located in the middle of the forest area, and they really hope that they will have a pretty good time while fixing the cabin a bit.

Of course, that cabin in the question has full of ominous signs they should have noticed right from the very beginning. Besides its interior being decorated with old newspaper clippings associated with a certain infamous serial killing case, the cabin exudes a rather disturbing vibe here and there, and you may wonder whether it also has that diabolical ancient book from Sam Raimi’s little scary horror film “The Evil Dead” (1981).

Anyway, those young people happen to set up their tents at a spot not so far from the cabin, and one of them eagerly tells the others about that notorious serial killing case, but they do not mind at all just because, like the characters in “Friday the 13th” (1980) and its countless sequels and imitators, they simply want to have a fun weekend just like Dale and Tucker. During their first evening, they all go to a nearby river for skinny-dipping, and, what do you know, Tucker and Dale happen to be there for their little evening fishing.

Of course, there soon comes an unfortunate moment of misunderstanding between these two hillbilly dudes and one of the young people, who happens to be conveniently alone by herself. When she suddenly realizes that she is being spotted by Tucker and Dale, Allison (Katrina Bowden) comes to have a little accident which leaves her unconscious, and Dale and Tucker promptly take her unconscious body to their cabin like any decent person would do under this circumstance.

However, Allison’s friends completely misunderstand the situation when they happen to see Tucker and Dale taking her to their cabin. They think Dale and Tucker are kidnapping her, so they attempt to save her from Tucker and Dale, but that leads to more misunderstanding and conflict coupled with several hilariously bloody moments including the one involved with the woodchipper brought by Dale and Tucker. When the woodchipper appears early in the film, you may be reminded of that absurdly horrifying scene in the Coen Brothers’ great film “Fargo” (1996), and, yes, the movie does deliver its own humorously gory moment as expected. 

After many darkly uproarious moments during the first half, the screenplay by director Eli Craig and his co-writer Morgan Jurgenson becomes relatively less engaging as facing the inherent limits of its one-joke setup, but it still provides a fair share of amusement for us. Around the point where the true villain of the story eventually goes on a full-throttle mode, things get a bit more intense and outrageous than before, and you will certainly cheer for a nod to Tobe Hopper’s classic horror film “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (1974).

The success of the movie depends on a lot on its straight attitude to its story and characters, and its four main cast members accordingly stick to that while never being aware of being on the joke at all. Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine ably complement each other as a mismatched duo to tickle us in one way or another, and their earnest comic acting makes us actually care more about their characters even though we frequently laugh for their characters’ increasingly absurd situation. While Katrina Bowden has her own moment when her character tries to set up a silly but undeniably refreshing moment for reconciliation between her saviors and her remaining friends, Jesse Moss gleefully chews every moment of his as the most aggressive character in the story, and that certainly brings more amusement for us.

Overall, “Tucker & Dale vs. Evil” is a solid genre product I regrettably undervalued at that time, and now I rectify my mistake via adding a half star to my initial rating. By the way, the main reason for revising this little funny film is the South Korean remake version which happens to be released here in South Korean in this week, and I sincerely hope that it will amuse and entertain me as much as the original version.