An “Evil” Farce

1,224 words

Aging well is one of the best signs of how inspired a movie is—especially for comedies. To make audiences laugh the filmmakers must share certain frames of reference with them—things against which other things can go splat, so to speak. Since frames of reference change over time, making lasting comedies often requires finding the right frames of reference. The well-dressed rich man slipping on a banana peel is a timeless joke, of course, but it’s hardly timely. Getting your lolz when an obnoxious internet influencer meets a snarky comeuppance may be timely, on the other hand, but hardly timeless. Audiences crave comedies which are both, a deceptively narrow needle to thread.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, an inspired farce if there ever was one, accomplishes both with such aplomb that it makes one wonder how it barely made its money back at the box office in 2010 and hasn’t reached cult status by now. Director Eli Craig, who co-wrote the screenplay with Morgan Jurgenson, churns out the guffaws with the classic mistaken identity trope. A handful of college students go camping deep in the West Virginia woods and continually mistake two loveable locals (Tucker and Dale) as villains. Meanwhile, Tucker and Dale believe the college kids are completely insane, which, ironically, is not a mistaken identity at all. This imbalance opens a nearly bottomless treasure trove of comedy.

The movie situates its farce within three main frames of reference. The first two—the slasher film genre and various anti-rural stereotypes—become immediately apparent when the preppy Chad (Jesse Moss), in his teal polo shirt with upturned collar, mocks West Virginians by quoting the famous “squeal like a pig” line from Deliverance. Later, he tells his college friends the grisly story of how his father had been murdered by hillbillies twenty years earlier. Clearly, he has a grudge against hillbillies. The students encounter the grizzled Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and portly Dale (Tyler Labine) on the road to the campsite, and are appalled by their rough edges and grimy appearance. At a gas station, Dale tries to start a conversation with the pretty Allison (Katrina Bowden), but stutters and laughs nervously. In his raggedy overalls and torn sleeves, which show off his meaty arms, he doesn’t exactly make a good impression. Of course, the students latch on to the worst possible interpretation—that these two strangers are a couple of sicko rednecks—and flee, leaving Tucker and Dale utterly confused.

The countrified horror score, stark cinematography, and spooky camera angles add to the faux tension, as does the decrepit vacation home near the campsite which Tucker and Dale are fixing up. Apparently, the previous owner was a mass murderer who had left clues of his horrific crimes all over the cabin. This includes a grotesquely lethal booby trap, bones hanging from the ceilings, and newspaper clippings of murder stories on the wall. How our perfectly innocent protagonists react to this latent abattoir reveals the twisted, beautiful heart of this movie. Dale merely assumes that the previous owners were news junkies. Meanwhile, Tucker appears transfixed by the headline “BODY FOUND IN CREEK,” but instead gets excited by the ad right next to it.

Behold, Chubby’s Chili Dog Depot:

That evening, while the students are skinny dipping in a lake, Tucker and Dale save Allison from drowning and take her unconscious body back to the cabin to recover. Chad and the students see this as an abduction, and, believing they are dealing with a pair of psycho killers, vow to rescue her. As they do so, they find hilariously improbable ways of getting themselves killed, all the while making Tucker and Dale seem like the killers.

Yes, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is as gory and violent as the slasher films it spoofs. But because its farcical heart beats true, and Tucker and Dale are so likeable, and the college kids so annoying, audiences won’t cringe at this. The creatively excessive violence generates not only laughs, but stunned respect for how the filmmakers could come up with so many ingenious ways of doing these kids in.

As good as all this is, the third comedic frame of reference reveals the movie’s true genius—anti-wokeness. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil has the honorable distinction of being anti-woke before there was woke, which is why it has aged so well. Aside from Allison, the college students are so enamored with theory that they neglect the tangible reality right in front of them. They see Tucker and Dale doing perfectly mundane things and assume they are up to the most heinous form of evil. This causes them to panic and behave like lunatics—sort of like college kids today. A great example is how students at Middlebury College in Vermont shouted down and attacked race-realist researcher and author Charles Murray in 2017. Jared Taylor met with similar resistance when hysterical students attempted to disrupt his recent talk at Colorado Mesa University. When college kids meet someone speaking in good faith about demonstrable racial differences, and then leap to the wild conclusion that he’s a “white supremacist” who wants to lynch blacks and gas Jews, they are engaging in exactly the kind of hyperbolic lunacy found in Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.

Perhaps we can call this the Richard Jewell effect—finding an awkward yet innocent white person and automatically assuming the worst about him. It’s something that comes up with the Will Askew character in my novel Critical Daze, and is everywhere in Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.

Despite being a sweetheart, Allison is not entirely immune from this. As she gets to know Dale (and grows to like him), she reveals she’s a psychology major who has the naïve dream of solving the world’s problems through communication. But when she actually puts this plan in effect during a tense scene between Dale and Chad, she fails catastrophically. At least later she has the honesty to admit that she would make a terrible therapist. There is another moment in the movie so brilliant I dare not spoil it. Suffice it to say, we reach a scene in which Tucker and Dale’s mistaken identity can be completely undone and the tension finally resolved, yet the college students blow it by appropriately applying their book learning to the situation. “There’s a difference between education and intellect,” Allison tells Dale at one point. Dale, who is a lot smarter than he lets on, seems to fall in love with Allison at that moment.

Yes, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is really a love story at heart, and a sweet one at that. And hold on to your armbands and monocles, ladies and gentlemen, it’s also pro-white. Being a hillbilly is a matter of lineage in this movie, and that is a good thing. There may be some gentle fun poked at rural whites in the story (Tucker pouring Pabst Blue Ribbon over his bee stings being one of my favorite gags), but nothing at which they themselves cannot find a laugh. Dale and Allison connect over this when she reveals that she is a hillbilly as well. Thus, their relationship goes deeper than merely being honest or rejecting wokeness.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil may be a brilliant farce, but as with Dale himself, its appeals goes much deeper than it initially lets on.