The film starts with a short scene of handheld camera following a women as they walk through a house, the women walks through a door and gets knocked over by a man out of frame and we can see that the man holding the camera is running away before getting caught by the man who also hurt the woman. The clip ends with a close up of this man with half of his face dripping with blood and a creepy grin. By starting the film this way, Craig attracts the audience by using a conventional horror setting that they will immediately recognise as being a threat. From here there is the title screen. The majority of the title is in big white writing, however ‘evil’ is written in red to connote danger. The screen is also splattered in blood which hints that there is going to be body horror in the film. The mood of the film completely changes after this however as there is a long shot of a car driving down a long road in the middle of the day with extra diegetic music which is upbeat and happy. The college kids that are in the car are another horror convention, and the two men who pass them in their truck (who we later find out of be Tucker and Dale) are portrayed to be the threat of the film by the college kids, and the parallel music reinforces this idea.
Throughout this film, Tucker and Dale are repeatedly misunderstood to be evil serial killers when all they want to do is renovate their vacation home. This misunderstanding leads to the comedy elements in the film, for example when Tucker aggravates some bees he waves around his chainsaw which the college kids interpret as psychopathic. Dale is portrayed as being innocent and considerate, for example when Allison takes off her clothes he covers his eyes instead of watching her, even though he is attracted to her. Laura Mulvey’s theory of the “male gaze” is used in this scene to make the audience attracted to Allison, but Dale’s kindly actions subvert this theory.Tucker and Dale rescue Allison when she falls and hits her head and throughout the film, they are trying to return her to her friends safely whilst her friends are plotting to rescue her from her ‘psychopathic captors’. Another misinterpretation in the film is Dale saying that he “beat the crap out of her” in earshot of the teenagers. Whilst they think that he’s talking literally, he’s actually talking about beating her in a board game.A lot of the film are slow montages, relying on the music to build up the tension. The gore in the film doesn’t start until 30 minutes in when one of the teenagers runs at Dale with a large stick, trips and impales himself on it whilst another teenager runs and jumps head first into the wood chipper that Tucker is near. Blood spurts everywhere and covers Tucker in it, which makes him look responsible for the death. They know how guilty they will look to the police even though they believe that it’s a suicide pact which is causing the college kids to die horrible deaths. By now the audience knows that it’s not Tucker and Dale who are the threats and they are actually the male heroes of the film, and attention shifts to one of the teenagers, Chad who is the archetypal psychotic killer. Chad seems to be thriving on the deaths and is angry that the others wanted to get the police to help them. He is also controlling and arrogant, and low angle shots make him seem powerful. He also threatens Allison by holding an axe up to her throat and shouting “Are you falling in love with him?”. The film also has a few flashbacks to 20 years ago, the Memorial Day Massacre in the same woods when psycho killers attacked a group of teenagers, brutally killing them. Including this in the film has the effect of reinforcing the conventional elements of horror that are in the film, such as the body horror . The film ends with the vacation home being set on fire and Chad getting burnt, a close up on his face alarms us and reveals him to be the man from the clip at the start of the film. He also kidnaps Allison, and ties her up before Dale rescues her after battling with Chad using chainsaws and crowbars. Rescuing Allison identifies Dale as the hero of the film. With the horror over, the film finishes with an emotional talk between Tucker and Dale which leads to Dale finally asking Allison out.
In my own trailer, I’d like to include the conventional horror setting of the cabin in the woods. This is because I think audiences immediately recognise this and the familiarity of the setting will also attract the audience that I want to. However, I would avoid using the irony and comedy in the film for my own trailer because I think it would be very difficult to get it right and I don’t want my trailer to look cheesy and ineffective.
Tucker and Dale vs Evil took three years to make before it was released in January 2010. I think that the film reflects its historical context because of the number of massacres in recent years, such as the Capitol Hill massacre in Seattle and the Shedden massacre in Ontario. In the last 20 years, massacres have increased in number and have involved places where you’re supposed to be safe such as schools, or leisure activities such as camping which is used in Tucker and Dale. The film also demonstrates societies views of hillbillies and their involvement in horror films such as The Hills Have Eyes (1977).
I think that the comedy in Tucker and Dale vs Evil works well because it takes a well known horror plot line of teenagers camping in the woods and getting terrorised and breaks it down so that they’re actually the threat to themselves. The film can be compared to the likes of the Blair Witch Project (1999) or Cabin in the Woods (2012) where groups of teenagers are actually terrorised in this kind of setting, although they don’t involve any psycho killers. I think there is a subtle message in Tucker and Dale vs Evil that the horror culture is brainwashing us into assuming the worst of situations and as a result, the worst of the people around us.
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