"Tucker and Dale vs Evil" arrives like a gleaming machete, slicing through the dense undergrowth of horror movie clichés. Here is a film that understands the DNA of cabin-in-the-woods slasher flicks so intimately that it can dissect them with surgical precision and abundant wit.

The setup is deceptively simple: Two good-hearted hillbillies, Tucker (Tyler Labine) and Dale (Alan Tudyk), venture to their newly acquired fixer-upper cabin in the wilderness. At a ramshackle establishment bearing the ominous name "Last Chance Gas" - itself a knowing wink to every horror film where civilization ends at a rustic pump station - they encounter a group of college students who mistake their awkward friendliness for backwoods menace.

What follows is both homage and subversion, like watching a familiar horror movie in a funhouse mirror. The film understands that sometimes the scariest monster is the one we create in our minds when we judge others too quickly. Labine and Tudyk, with their earnest performances, become our guides through this clever deconstruction of horror tropes.

The woods. Pretty creepy and a lot of room for a murderous rampage.

In a delicious twist of misunderstanding, our paths cross again at the lake, where collegiate revelry meets backwoods innocence. When Allison (played with bubbly charm by Katrina Bowden) slips on a moss-slicked rock during a midnight skinny-dipping excursion, Tucker and Dale rush to her aid - but through the fog of prejudice and panic, her friends see only the nightmare their imagination has conjured. To them, these well-meaning hillbillies are suddenly transformed into backwoods bogeymen, straight out of every horror movie cliché they've internalized.

What follows is a symphony of slapstick tragedy, as the college kids' attempts at vigilante justice become an exercise in accidental self-destruction. One by one, they fall victim not to murderous hillbillies, but to their own misguided crusade - a pointed commentary on how fear can make us architects of our own undoing.

This guy loves clippings

"Tucker & Dale vs. Evil" walks a delicate tightrope between horror and hilarity, and somehow manages not to fall. Like "Shaun of the Dead" before it, it understands that the best genre parodies come from a place of genuine affection rather than mockery.

The film cleverly subverts every backwoods slasher trope in the book: the West Virginia setting (borrowed from "Wrong Turn"), the supposedly menacing hillbillies (a nod to "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"), and the parade of college stereotypes who meet their demise in increasingly spectacular fashion. We get the promiscuous party girl, the bookish nerd, the token African-American, and the virginal hero – all horror movie staples that the film gleefully deconstructs.

What's remarkable here is the film's precise calibration of tone. Just when the blood starts flowing – and flow it does – the movie pivots to comedy with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel. Yet unlike lesser entries in the horror-comedy genre, it never descends into pure farce. There's a sweetness at its core, a humanity that keeps the proceedings grounded even as the body count rises.

The filmmakers understand something crucial: restraint. By not pushing the humor into the realm of the absurd, they maintain just enough plausibility to keep us invested. It's a neat trick, making us laugh at death while simultaneously making us believe in the world they've created.

In a genre where most films stumble into self-parody, "Tucker & Dale" maintains its balance. Yes, it teaches us not to judge others by their appearance and not to accidentally impale ourselves on sharp objects – both worthy lessons – but it does so while remaining consistently entertaining.

Three stars

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This is a part of Fright Cinema 2015, a list of the best horror movies handpicked in no particular order by The Wandering Klutz. It features ten (10) films every year just in time for the scariest season of the year.