Culture

Reason Writers at the Movies: Peter Suderman Reviews Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil in The Washington Times

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In today's Washington Times, Associate Editor Peter Suderman reviews the slasher-spoof Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

"Tucker & Dale vs. Evil" may not actually be the goriest film of 2011, but it probably comes close. The movie features flayed faces, impaled bodies, bursts of gooey arterial spray and a scene in which two bloody rednecks wrest a torso-less half-corpse out of a woodchipper.

It's also one of the nicest films of the year.

Part grisly, low-budget horror spoof, part loopy, role-reversing comedy, the movie offers a sort of genre-film thought experiment: You know all those beady-eyed, chain-saw-wielding hillbillies who seem to be constantly menacing bands of teenagers in woodsy horror movies?

What if they weren't really backwoods sadists, but goofy, misunderstood hillbillies just as horrified by gruesome violence as the teens rapidly dying all around them? And what if the teenagers brought the true evil with them—and only the goodhearted hicks could stop it. Call it "The Hills Have … Surprise!"

Whole thing here.