Fromage Fridays #42; Zombeavers

Honestly, I think this poster speaks volumes more than my intros ever could.

It’s become a bit of a recurring gag this year among critic circles that 2017 belongs to horror films and while looking at box office results and public receptions would indicate some accuracy to that assessment I hardly would have ever expected that phenomenon to follow me to the small screen this year.

5 minutes into “Cult of Chucky,” I knew I had found my definitive “Fromage Fridays” pick for the holiday season but even if viewing that didn’t pan out well, it’s nice to know that my alternative of scientifically mutated revenant aquatic rodents terrorizing college douche bags would have been almost as good.

There’s not really much to run into the ground on this one folks. “Zombeavers” is exactly what you get in the title.

4 minutes into the movie, Bill Burr is an incompetent trucker that seems stereotypically heterosexual until recounting his week long relationship with a guy that was really cool and simple, despite the sex being rough. He hits a deer while texting which causes a barrel of chemicals from his truck to roll into a nearby lake and subsequently contaminate a beaver dam.

If this doesn’t set you up for what’s to come, we of course immediately cut to 3 dim sorority girls caught up in the first world problems of having no access to Instagram road tripping to the small lakeside cabin alongside the sight of the incident as though the film were a calculated instance of the scenarios studied by “The Cabin in the Woods.”

What ensues is every laughable cliché in the trashy horror handbook from bikini free boobs, to sex comedy hijinks, to busted cars and no access to phones, all wrapped up with trimmings provided by the somewhat adorable ratty hand puppets and animatronics that embody the titular creatures.

The premise alone obviously had everything that it needed to succeed but where the film does succeed where so many others in its vein (Cowboysvs. Dinosaurs) fail is not only an earnest dedication to the concept itself but the mere expenditure of effort to actually make a movie period.

“Zombeavers” isn’t just a bunch of cobbled together bad one liners spouted by non-actors reacting to nonexistent special effects; it is an actual movie. A B-movie granted but you never realize quite how far having actual dialogue, plot, pacing, and characterization can actually take you regardless of the quality of acting and limitations of resources.

Although it plays itself straight, don’t mistake “Zombeavers” as having any delusions of grandeur. It is a comedy through and through, stuck in a strange nebulous zone of self awareness and sincerely celebratory execution. With all of the legwork put into actual filmmaking however, it does ultimately work as a movie that doesn’t exactly wink to the audience but happily laughs along with them and whatever commentary they may provide.

As silly as the beavers are, when the attacks are in full force the cast treat it about as seriously as it needs to be treated, saving the intended written jokes for the areas in which such humor would actually be appropriate. And right when you think you know where it’s going, further twists pile up regarding the nature of the zombie infection that ludicrously amp things even further.

Not every concept works nor does every joke land but “Zombeavers” was a consistently entertaining and surprisingly effective viewing from start to finish that never slows down and at a brisk hour and 15 minutes long doesn’t even come close to overstaying its welcome, even going out on a high note with a genuinely funny gag real and a Zombeavers theme song.

I’m serious.

3 out of 4 Shanters

 

Bottom Line: That theme song almost pushed it into 3½  Shats.