Movies
SXSW ’10 REVIEW: Another Look at ‘Tucker and Dale vs Evil’
Ryan Daley reviewed the film at this past Sundance Film Festival, now below you’ll find Tim Anderson’s take on Eli Craig’s horror-comedy Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, which is called “a backwoods comedy of horrific errors” in which two unsuspecting buddies, Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine), fall victim to the crazed machinations of a group of spring breakers who have mistaken them for backwoods killers. Keep up with all of our SXSW coverage by clicking here.
Tucker (Alan Tudyk, Serenity) and Dale (Tyler Labine, Reaper) are just your everyday average, overall-wearing, redneck, hillbilly, backwoods, country boys. But hey, they got dreams too. And, Tucker’s dream is to buy a vacation home. So, when the pair arrive at their newly purchased ramshackle cabin in the woods, they’re so excited, or perhaps clueless, that they totally ignore the bee hives, the leaky roof, the rotting floor and all the serial killer décor that adorns the crusty spotted-brown walls. Sure the whole place looks like a death trap and a stiff wind might blow the roof off at any second, but damnit, this is home, and Tucker and Dale are just thrilled to be here for some quality fishing time. Of course things never go as smoothly in a horror film as one would like, and when a group of doofy college kids show up, it’s only a matter of time before Tucker and Dale’s little vacation time turns into the holiday from hell.
Thanks to a little happenstance, one sexy co-ed Allison (Katrina Bowden) bumps her head on a rock skinny dipping in the vicinity of our hapless hayseed heroes. When Dale rushes to rescue her, in the dark and foggy night, the other half-wit college kids swear they just watched their friend get kidnapped. When they try to rescue her from the “evil” Tucker and Dale, that’s when the hilarity ensues. In their efforts to save their friend, the college kids one by one `accidentally’ kill themselves off–every new death effectively blamed on our intrepid heroes. For Tucker and Dale’s part, the daft duo are absolutely horrified by the senseless carnage and assume it must be some kind of sick suicide pact.
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is s seriously one-note flick, but into that single solitary comedy of errors-set up is delivered every possible fulfilled promise. There are boatloads of bloodshed, but it’s almost all punctuated with a slapstick smack of silliness. The stunts that you can see coming are still hilarious and the ones you don’t anticipate detonate like a smart bomb against your funny bone.
The film wouldn’t work half as well if it weren’t for the “best friends forever” chemistry of leads Tudyk and Labine. Both actors–who are instantly recognizable by genre fans (even if you can’t place their names)–shouldn’t be able to blend as seamlessly into their personas as they do. It’s a testament to their skill that we believe immediately that not only are they who they say they are, but that they really have been friends for life. This instant connection really helps the audience bridge the gap between simply viewing a jokey film and actively participating in the journey that takes place on screen. It also helps us suspend disbelief a little bit easier when an unsuspected relationship between Allison and Dale begins to blossom. As the pair of “least likely’s” connect and progress very believably (even if it seems unbelievable) we can’t help but root for the crazy kids to make it out alive.
Horror comedy is hardly a venue for great characterization and development, and aside from Tucker, Dale and Allison, everyone else in the film is your requisite Friday the 13th cast of cardboard cutout kids that are destined for the business end of a sharp stake or the gnashing teeth of a good old wood chipper. But the crazy glue that holds these three leads together is something very special and that sense of camaraderie elevates Tucker and Dale far above your run of the mill gore-drenched gut buster.
4/5 Skulls
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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