Idiocy is a tough gig to pull off. The dumber the concept, the smarter the brains behind it has to be – and let’s be honest, the concept of zombie beavers is an immensely stupid idea. And yet, just the merging of the two words “zombie” and “beaver” in the first place requires a certain amount of savvy (in fact, I’d be willing to bet folding money that the title existed long before any other aspect of the movie did) and to construct a movie, even a deeply silly one, requires a certain mind to help it all hang together.
By the mid-2010s, plenty of other movies who had seemingly been created from the title up had been unleashed onto an unsuspecting audience that had ranged from everything from Sharknado to Sharktopus, but not all of them – in fact, precious few of them – managed to display the wit needed to pull off the goofiness. Can Zombeavers find the right level of awfulness to nail some top notch belly laughs or is it more of a case of “Oh Hell, gnaw!”.
After a loose barrel of glowing, green toxic chemicals falls from a truck and splashes into a river, the local beaver population gets transformed into a batch of milky-eyed, snarling zombie creatures that sets out on the hunt for human blood.
They find it in the form of Mary, Zoe and Jenn, a trio of college students who are visiting the cabin of Mary’s cousin to spend a girl’s weekend of swimming and sun bathing to help Jenn get over her recent breakup with the cheating Sam. However, unbeknownst to them, their trio of boyfriends have decided to crash their trip in order to get laid and drunk while Sam and Jenn try to work out their differences.
The holiday takes something of a extreme turn when one of those bloody zombeavers infiltrates their cabin and starts attacking Jenn kids with its giant teeth, but after the group kill the thing, wrap its body in a garbage bag and get back to partying. However the next day, while they frolic on a big, anchored raft, the zombeavers attack in force removing a foot from Zoe’s boorish fella, Buck, and savaging her little dog into oblivion.
Taking refuge in the cabin, the youths realise that if they don’t split up and get help, Buck will be well and truly fucked; so they split up with half the group staying put while the other tries to get Buck to safety before he bleeds out. However, the mere presence of undead water mammals is only part of the murderous danger these little fuckers present. Soon the bitten members of the group start to feel a little funny and before you know it, they start transforming into human/beaver zombie hybrids and things really get fucked up.
With zombie beavers and actual mutants loping about the place, the ones left alive realise that they have to escape before they are well and truly dammed.
When you consider that Zombeavers was brought to us by various producers who gave us the likes of American Pie and Cabin Fever, things immediately start to make sense. While only one of these movies featured a bunch of students going to a cabin and falling foul of some rustic fuckery, both included more than their fair share of horny, obnoxious teens who would presumably stick their dick in a petrol pump if you put lipstick and a blonde wig on it. However, while both Fever and Pie both tried to make their exaggerated protagonists a little bit realistic, Zombeavers goes full cartoon, making the students so apocalyptically horny, literally all they talk about is fucking, humping and any other type of slang you’d care to use to describe making the beast with two backs. Of course this means the movie is chock full of endless double entendres that all contain the word “beaver” in it that ranges all the way from insults like “Filthy, hairy beavers!”, to more generalised phrases like “I’ve never seen a real beaver before”, which usually means you’re either going to be laughing like a drain or tutting and rolling your eyes like it’s an Olympic sport. In fact, most of the jokes are so painfully obvious, you’ll probably be uttering the punchlines before the characters do even if you’ve never seen the film.
Of course, while it’s extremely easy to write Zombeavers off for it’s obvious jokes, cheesy dialogue and highly questionable acting, you have to consider that anyone who makes a film called Zombeavers knows exactly what the hell they’re doing. Hence, if you are willing to play the filmmaker’s infantile game, Zombeavers proves to be something of a throwaway riot that evokes childish laughter due to that knowing tone that not only seems to be in on it’s massively ridiculous joke, but is extraordinarily proud of it too. Movies like Gone With The Wind may have such immortal lines as “frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” or “after all, tomorrow is another day”, but it certainly doesn’t have such mindless genius as an old coot remarking “it’s just those kids scissoring to Lady Gaga” when responding to a loud noise.
While the filthy minded quips are fun, the real laughs comes from the practical effects and gore gags that go above and beyond the call of duty by being both wonderfully shit and weirdly perfect. The zombeavers themselves are gorgeously motley fuckers who are either presented as snarling, jerky, blank-eyed animatronics or even just straight up hand puppets and the fact that they’re so obviously dodgy just adds to the fun in a sort of throwback 80s way that invokes the likes of movies such as Critters. However, as fun as watching a bunch of mugging actors get savaged by beaver puppets, the filmmakers deside to up the ante by having the a beaver bite transform you into essential a giant beaver person, complete with huge chompers. While this admittedly is a blatent steal from the 2006 New Zealand killer sheep movie Black Sheep, that once saw a man tranform into a mutant sheep monster, it still manages to inject some genuine surprises into proceedings. For example, I had absolutely no clue the movie contained such an outrageous creature feature, but when it happened I was absolutely fucking floored in a good way as it felt that the film was giving me a little extra bonus weird for no extra charge.
However, to dismiss Zombeavers as the same kind of junk that clutters up the ranks of low budget killer animal movies proves to be a little unfair, even when you take into account that the movie features random cameos from Bill Burr and John Mayer. The end credits actually go as far as to include outtakes and an actual swing-style theme song (choice lyrics: A cheerful gang of college students; Think they’re on vacation;
Instead, they’re dodging beaver chompers;
And facing their damnation) which is all the proof you need that this particular slice of foolishness is dam fun.
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