Main cast: Rachel Melvin (Mary Daughtry), Cortney Palm (Zoe), Lexi Atkins (Jenn), Hutch Dano (Sam), Jake Weary (Tommy), Peter Gilroy (Buck), Bill Burr (Joseph), Rex Linn (Smyth), Brent Briscoe (Winston Gregorson), Phyllis Katz (Myrne Gregorson), Robert R Shafer (Trucker), Chad Anderson (Adam), and John Mayer (Luke)
Director: Jordan Rubin
Zombeavers is an Asylum-tier horror comedy flick – the premise of zombie beavers certainly is worthy of such a distinction – but bizarrely enough, there are some folks with pedigree that should usually elevate them beyond dignifying this film with their presence: voice actor Fred Tatasciore gives the beaver puppets their voices, the late Brent Briscoe, and even freaking John Mayer in a cameo. Instead of some vulgar comedy full of beaver jokes, this one ends up being a somewhat quasi-respectable horror comedy that manages to subvert some popular horror tropes while at the same time paying homage to certain movies that fans of cult horror films will recognize and hopefully appreciate.
Basically, thanks to two idiot truck drivers that aren’t paying to the road and end up hitting a moose, a can of the toxic waste they are carrying ends up finding its way into a nearby river and to a lake where beavers have made their dam. The toxic waste is of The Return of the Living Dead caliber – the beavers are soon turned into homicidal beavers with glowing eyes, ooh.
Unaware of the rodent reception awaiting them, three young ladies arrive for some girls-only R&R at a house by that lake. The house belongs to Mary Daughtry’s aunt; she brings her BFFs Zoe and Jenn here mostly to cheer Jenn up. You see, Jenn’s boyfriend Sam was caught on photo snogging some girl whose face wasn’t clear in that picture, and that photo was uploaded on Facebook with Sam tagged, so Jenn knows of the pic because she follows Sam and… well, that’s how Facebook works – privacy is a joke – and that’s why I personally don’t do social media anymore. That and using social media seems to automatically turn one into a shrieking imbecile who lives for performative wokeness – social media is the true culprit that turns people into braindead zombies these days, clearly. Hey, maybe someone should make that kind of zombie movie.
Back to this one, it is easy to assume that the characters are the usual stereotypes: Jenn is a blonde so she is the dumb one, Zoe talks about craving sex so she will be the slut and the first to die, and Mary is given a surname and she is made out to be a glass-wearing nerd, so she is clearly the final girl. Well, prepare to be taken aback by how the movie switches things up: these ladies are the biggest subversions of female clichés in horror flicks, and you may be pleasantly surprised by way things turn out for these gals. Of course, we need more body count, so Mary secretly invites their boyfriends along too, to surprise Jenn and Zoe a few days later. For Jenn, it’s an unpleasant surprise as Sam is the last person she’d like to see at that moment, while Zoe is thrilled because a real pee-pee is always better than a vibrator.
Again, the boyfriends seem to be clear-cut stereotypes at first: Sam is the asshole jock, Buck is the clown, and Tommy seems like the nice guy. Well, they don’t subvert stereotypes to an extent that their girlfriends do, but there are still some surprises to be had along the way. Sam is especially hilarious as the asshole that thinks he’s actually the hero in a horror movie – he says and does things that Ash Williams would say and do, but of course the viewers know that he’s actually filling the jerk-ass jock role in this movie.
The idiots cavort on a raft that seems to have floated here from the second story in Creep Show 2, while lounging and posing like they are the camp counselors in a Friday the 13th movie. Sadly, the beavers seem to be smarter than them, as these undead rodents soon cut off the phone and even power supplies before conducing a home siege that home invasion movie villains would be proud of.
As I’ve mentioned, this movie is surprisingly restrained with the beaver puns and jokes, but it doesn’t shy away from some topless nudity. However, for the most part, the movie plays out more like a cheeky parody aiming to be as much as a B-grade movie as possible. The beavers are either hand puppets or animatronic thingies, looking really fake all the while, but I suspect that’s the point of the beavers in the first place. The characters do stupid things, of course, and there are lapses of logic here and there, but there is a playful “See? We’re having fun being a terrible B-grade movie here!” vibe to all of these things, so I can certainly play along and have fun in the process. The few scenes of gore are surprisingly well done, though, although for the most part, the movie will prefer to be as bad as possible.
Perhaps to be expected, the movie does fumble in many ways too. I certainly appreciate the intention behind it, but my god, having people that had been bitten by the undead beavers transforming into human-beaver freaks really looks hilarious – and I say that in an “Oh my god, I am cringing so hard, that my sides are starting to kill me!” way. Maybe other people will find the sight of a human growing giant Bugs Bunny front teeth and a beaver tail hilarious, but I think the movie slides straight into Scooby-Doo territory there and then. Good lord, that scene with that human-beaver freak thumping its tail against the floor repeatedly for a stupefying long period of time – I actually ask myself what I am doing with my life during that scene.
Anyway, despite that, I still manage to have fun with Zombeavers, much to my surprise, and should they puke out a sequel from that ludicrous scene after the credits, I think I may actually watch it.
