****
Best friends Dale and Tucker escape to the woods to renovate an old wood cabin and relax with a few beers. At the same time, a group of college kids descend upon the wood for a camping trip, but when Dale and Tucker rescue one of the party from drowning, the peaceful holiday descends into blood shed.
This hilarious horror-comedy plays upon all the clichés and tropes we know from countless horror films: a cabin in the woods; a group of gormless, good-looking college kids; a tale of a previous grisly murder; and hillbillies, and cleverly subverts them. Hillbillies Dale and Tucker (Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk) are not the murderous, deranged individuals of Deliverance and others of the same ilk, rather ordinary working men wanting to escape on holiday and decorate their newly acquired holiday home. In a twist of fate, it's the college kids who have the murderous side, aiming to rescue their friend, Allison (Katrina Bowden), by whatever means necessary. Cue impaling, a scene with a wood chipper, and a disastrous attempt to take the safety off a gun. It is delightfully gory, and knowingly so, with blood spraying up the walls in copious amounts, often drenching our heroes.
Some of the one-liners are impeccable and laugh-out-loud funny, whilst the increasingly absurd ways in which the college kids end up dead are similarly amusing. The relationship between Dale and Tucker is perfectly pitched, as two simpletons just wanting to have a good holiday and end up covered in blood. With such a short run time (under one and a half hours), the film nips along at a swift pace, but still manages to create better character development between Dale and Tucker than most long films. Most of this is down to top-notch comedy timing from Alan Tudyk, who can express a great deal with a single hilarious facial expression.
Unrelentingly gory and hilarious in equal measure, this small little film manages to subvert all the tropes we have come to expect from your typical horror story, and it does it well. The premise of one simple misunderstanding between two groups of people may read as basic, but this only benefits the film, which can then focus on piling up the bodies, and churning out the laughs. I would've liked to have seen the role of the lead female subverted, but unfortunately changing a young, blonde, slim female with a flat stomach and perfect teeth may have been a step too far.
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