Of all the holidays celebrated worldwide, no single day is loved by the Substream staff more than Halloween. With October’s arrival, the time has finally come to begin rolling out a slew of special features we have prepared in celebration of our favorite day.
31 Days Of Halloween is a recurring column that will run throughout the month of October. The goal of this series is to supply every Substream reader with a daily horror (or Halloween-themed) movie recommendation that is guaranteed to amplify your All Hallows’ Eve festivities. We’ll be watching every film the day it’s featured, and we hope you will follow along at home. Reader, beware, you’re in for a… spooky good time!
Day 26: Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010)
The predominant feeling that a horror movie is… well, horror. Seems pretty simple, right? But a horror movie can’t be non-stop jump scares and dismemberment. Besides the need for narrative and exposition, too much of one emotion for a long stretch dulls the effect. You need other emotions mixed in to give the horror that nice skin-crawling pop it needs. Filmmakers can mix in romance, sadness, or intrigue to make their movies tick. Or they can make it really, really funny. At first it might seem like an unnatural choice, but it makes sense. Humor is about as far way from horror as you can get, so it can make the swing between the two even more effective. This has proven effective recently, as the new adaptation of IT is hilarious when it’s not terrifying. While it’s by no means the first to blend jokes with its scares, Eli Craig‘s 2010 film Tucker and Dale vs Evil is one of the best examples of making a horror movie funny.
A group of college students are spending the weekend camping up in the mountains. On the way up to their camping site they’re almost run off the road by a couple hillbillies. Those hillbillies, Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine), are our protagonists just on their way to a new vacation home, and just like the preppy crowd from your high school and college memories, most of the kids are actually kinda dicks. The one exception to that is Allison (Katrina Bowden), who Tucker and Dale save after a swimming accident. This leads to a lot of confusion between Tucker and Dale and the kids, resulting in some equally gruesome and hilarious accidents and mistakes before it starts to become apparent that the group’s ringleader, Chad (Jesse Moss), might be a bit unstable and dangerous on top of being a giant jerk.
If you’re going to attempt to make a horror movie funny, there are two big things you need: your writing needs to be up to par, and your actors need to sell it. Both are thankfully accounted for in Tucker and Dale. Craig’s script does a fantastic job of poking fun at the tropes of “crazed hillbilly” films like The Hills Have Eyes and creating funny moments out of the usual frightening tropes. There’s a clever and effective visual nod to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the accidental deaths that just seem to keep happening to everyone around the hillbillies are clever enough to satisfy those watching for the laughs and bloody enough for those here for the frights. The movie gets away from its strength of comedy as it shifts into its climax, but there are still bits that should invoke a chuckle or two. Allison leading a therapy session between Dale and Chad is a highlight, containing the right mix of humor, earnestness, and emotional exposition.
None of this works if the actors can’t deliver on it, but again Tucker and Dale thrives. If you’ve seen any comedy he’s ever been in, you don’t need me to tell you that Tudyk has some of the best comedic timing in the business. His reaction to a poor college kid ending up in a wood chipper is pitch perfect, and his shaky explanation to a local sheriff is hilarious. All of the college kids do a good job of leaning into the caricature the script is aiming for without turning into full stereotypes, with Bowden standing out for her genuine sweetness and Moss giving Chad every bit of sliminess that the villain needs. All that being said, the star of the movie is Labine as Dale. He’s charged with being funny while also being the emotional core of the movie, and he deftly succeeds. There are times where Dale does dumb things, but director Eli Craig balances the dynamic well so that more often than not we’re laughing at Dale’s reactions to situations, not at Dale himself. Throughout it all Labine makes Dale so earnest and good natured that it’s impossible not to root for him.
Halloween is supposed to be fun, so the horror comedy definitely has its place on your watchlist this month. If you’re going to pick one, Tucker and Dale vs Evil does a great job of splattering laughs and blood in equal measures. Get ready for a good time, but still check your doors and windows. You never know what’s lurking out in the woods.
