Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on February 2012

I never⎯ever⎯thought I’d enjoy a splatter flick, but this upside-down ode to the genre’s many clichés takes the pink potato. Tucker and Dale (Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine) are two affable hillbillies mistaken by a paranoid pack of prep-school partiers for chainsaw-wielding, woodchipper-operating, virgin-kidnapping Leatherfaces. Understand that, while a send-up, this is a spatter flick. The mayhem just comes from a humorously fresh source. It’s not great; at one point it comes dangerously close to the very thing it’s satirizing, and the one joke fades in the final act. But I smiled some.