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Tucker & Dale vs. Evil
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Magnolia Pictures Review written by and copyright: Andy James & Noor Razzak (11th January 2012). |
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The Film
 Eli Craig's "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil" comfortably situates itself within the "evil hillbilly" subgenre of horror films. Except it's from the hillbillies perspective, and they're not so much inbred vicious murdering good ole' boys as holiday home owning chaps who enjoy a bit of country music and dungaree wearin'. Yep, "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil" is a bit of a piss-take. Now, I'll fess up to not being any sort of expert on horror films in general, or evil hillbilly films in particular, but "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil" seem to hit more right notes than not. The film begins in standard enough fashion, with a group of douchey college kids off for a drunken weekend in the woods. They come across our boys Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) pickin' up petrol & supplies and are monumentally freaked out by them. The poor boys are just confused (and maybe a little hurt) by the college kids' reactions as they continue on to Tucker's recently purchased holiday home: a broken down piece o' crap that just happens to have once been the site of a brutal backwoods massacre (20 years ago today!). Tucker and Dale rescue one of the kids from drowning (the pretty, blonde one that Dale has a crush on), though the kids think she's been kidnapped. Hilarity and deliciously bloody (but accidental!) kills ensue. I'm a big Alan Tudyk fan but, boy howdy, Tyler Labine steals the film as it's big, dumb and hairy heart Dale. He's always so earnest and confused, but never over-selling it. Neither or these guys go for the "comedy hillbilly" and this is to the film's benefit. If these guys took it too far into comedy stereotype, they would have risked distancing the audience. And the chuckles wouldn't have worked half as well if we didn't care about the fates of Tucker & Dale. Katrina Bowden as Allison, the rescued/kidnapped young blonde girl does much with a fairly thankless role: she's essentially the straight man to all the crazy going on around her. But she's smart, pretty, funny and once she begins to see the real Dale you really hope she makes it through ok. The leader of the college kids is Chad (Jesse Moss): asthmatic, vengeful and a couple o' spoons short of a full jug band. Jesse Moss, lays it on thick and nearly ends up chewing the scenery but for him, it works: he's the leery, sneery bad guy! And boy, is a he a prick. There are a couple of minor hiccups and perhaps Craig didn't milk the concept for all it was worth; there may have been opportunity for him to make more reference to actual "evil hillbilly" horror films in more specificity. But like I said, I'm no horror aficionado and I had hoot of a time: Craig keeps the laughs and kills coming, with a lot of both being just pure dumb bad luck for our hillbilly heroes. "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil" is a damned fine addition to the horror-comedy genre with two lovable lead characters you can't help but root for. And I'll say this as well: thank the dark gods it's not another bloody zombie movie.
Video
Presented in the film's original theatrical ratio of 2.35:1 presented in HD 1080p 24/fps mastered using AVC MPEG-4 compression. As with a lot of films these days it's shot on the RED camera, in full resolution HD. The master was created from the original digital source and the results are excellent. The image is sharp and detailed, texture looks great, depth and clarity look good although some night scenes are little too dark. Colors look solid, skin tones are natural and black levels are nice and deep. The image is free from any compression related issues, no edge-enhancement or other technical flaws, it's a damn fine transfer.
Audio
The only audio track is an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mixed at 48kHz/24-bit. The film's audio is nice and balanced and features a decent amount of directional effects and depth. Dialogue is clear and distortion free, while not the most complex and bombastic audio track it surely does the trick for this film. Excellent environmental surrounds place viewer right into the film's backwoods locales, then picks up into a nicely aggressive mix once the horror elements kick in. Optional subtitles are included in English for the hearing impaired and Spanish.
Extras
Magnolia/Magnet has packed this disc with an audio commentary, three featurettes, a collection of outtakes, storyboards, a theatrical trailer, bonus trailers, BD-Live access and bookmarks. Below is a closer look at these supplements. First up is the feature-length screen-specific audio commentary by director Eli Craig and actors Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk. First impressions of this track are that these guys have been friends for a long time, they definitely have chemistry and they joke, goof around and laugh throughout this track... and it's not because there isn't anything to talk about but that they not only enjoyed their experiences on this film but they clearly enjoy bringing in the viewers into the fold and offer up some great production trivia on the making the film. From the casting to locations and the challenges they faced being a low budget film with a first time director. It's a worthy track to listen to. Next up is "Making of Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil" (1080p) a featurette that runs for 12 minutes 23 seconds, is an EPK clip that takes us through the basics of the production, from the scripting, working with a first time director, casting the film and the overall fun they had making it. Following that is "Tucker and Dale ARE Evil: The College Kids' Point of View" (1080p) featurette that runs for 16 minutes 47 seconds, with the magic of editing you see aspects of the film from perspective of the college kids only. A series of funny outtakes (1080p) are also featured and run for 7 minutes 51 seconds, most reels of this kind are filled with useless shots and actors flubbing lines, and while we do get some of that, we also get some really candidly funny moments caught on camera. You can look through a gallery of storyboards (1080p) that feature 97 images using your remote. Next is the "HDNet: A Look at Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil" (1080p) featurette runs for 4 minutes 32 seconds and is an even shorter EPK clip that was commissioned for the HDNet network to help sell the film to viewers. The film's original theatrical trailer (1080p) which runs for 2 minutes 32 seconds. The disc also features bonus trailers (1080p) for: - "The Last Circus" runs for 2 minutes 4 seconds. - "Blackthorn" runs for 2 minutes 25 seconds. - "Point Blank" runs for 2 minutes 4 seconds. - "Outrage" runs for 1 minute 53 seconds. - "HDNet" promo runs for 1 minute 1 second. Lastly are BD-Live access for profile 2.0 players and a bookmarks feature.
Overall
The film review was originally published on the blog Rockets and Robots are Go! by Andy James. The A/V and supplements were reviewed by Noor Razzak.
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