The current rating seems a little unfair to me. Sure, there's a lot that's soft and undercooked in this flick, but it's not unfunny, and the premise alone, as well as how far it's willing to go with it, should win it some extra points. The flick has enough surprises, laughs, and strong, clear-eyed direction to make it worth a slack night's viewing.
Eli Craig's got a knack for making horror/comedy out of big ideas. "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil" is essentially a horror film about bigotry and false perceptions of the other, and here Craig's made a light-hearted, but still relatively rich, riff on the horrors of being a step-father who's trying to connect with an emotionally distant child. All of that is to be commended, and I intend to keep following Craig's output.
Still, I get it, the son is essentially a non-character, more like a prop, really; there's zero chemistry between Evangeline Lilly and Adam Scott; and for a movie about relationships, it's pretty lazy when it comes to actually depicting the way people in those relationships act toward's one another. It could have really gone for it, the way "This is the End" went for it, but it didn't, it chose mush over metal in its overall approach, so go in expecting pretty light fare.
But honestly, it's better than most of the made for Netflix movies.
(Okja is an outlier)
Eli Craig's got a knack for making horror/comedy out of big ideas. "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil" is essentially a horror film about bigotry and false perceptions of the other, and here Craig's made a light-hearted, but still relatively rich, riff on the horrors of being a step-father who's trying to connect with an emotionally distant child. All of that is to be commended, and I intend to keep following Craig's output.
Still, I get it, the son is essentially a non-character, more like a prop, really; there's zero chemistry between Evangeline Lilly and Adam Scott; and for a movie about relationships, it's pretty lazy when it comes to actually depicting the way people in those relationships act toward's one another. It could have really gone for it, the way "This is the End" went for it, but it didn't, it chose mush over metal in its overall approach, so go in expecting pretty light fare.
But honestly, it's better than most of the made for Netflix movies.
(Okja is an outlier)