Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil

Judging by nearly 40 years of horror films, the denizens of the American rural South have nothing better to do than sit on their rickety porches, chew tobacco menacingly, and await a batch of wayward college students to kill and turn into decorative lampshades. Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil has a fun time playing with the genre’s tropes, pitting two well-meaning backwoods locals (Alan Tudyk, Tyler Labine) against a cadre of paranoid, airheaded spring breakers, or, more accurately, pitting both groups against a series of unfortunate misunderstandings and slapstick disembowelments. When the hicks selflessly attempt to save one of them from drowning, the kids — trained well on hellbilly splatter flicks — assume they?re kidnapping her. Rallying to her rescue, the coeds proceed to accidentally off themselves one by one as Tucker and Dale look on exasperatedly. At its heart, it’s really just a one-idea premise stretched out to feature length, but the lovable duo of Tudyk and Labine and an endearing layer of sweetness under all the blood make it a fully enjoyable comedy of (t)errors. B-