10 Slasher Movies That Broke All The Rules

The mid 2000’s saw a revival of the hillbilly horror slasher subgenre via a slew of remakes and homages which brought this particular (in)breed of killer-on-the-loose story to the fore. 2003’s Wrong Turn, 2006’s remake of Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes and Timber Falls, and 2007’s horror comedy Hatchet all saw their heroes wander off the beaten track and pay with their lives, borrowing from classic seventies horrors like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance for their country fried villains.

And where there’s a slasher trend, there’s always some smartass ready to flip it on its head. 2010 saw Eli Craig write and direct his debut feature Tucker and Dale Vs Evil, a slasher/rom-com which flipped expectations on their head by putting the audience in the perspective of the hillbillies instead of the college kids taking a trip to their secluded neck of the woods.

And the audience soon discovered, in a hilarious subversion of expectations, that the “villains” are bemused, good-hearted yokels who have no idea what these college kids are freaking out about, resulting in a bizarre and sweet unexpected love story—punctuated by a string of grisly deaths, naturally.