‘I’ve never seen a real beaver before up close...’
When Louis Le Prince, the inventor of the motion picture camera, filmed the Roundhay Garden Scene in 1888 (the earliest surviving example of the moving picture), he never could have known that his startling discovery would, 126 years later, lead to the film, Zombeavers. I wonder what he would have made of it…
Following a toxic waste spill, a bunch of beavers become infected with some kind of virus that leads to them becoming deadly killing machines, despite the fact they still mostly look adorable. A cast made up of Rachel Melvin, Cortney Palm, Lexi Atkins and Hutch Dano must overcome their own interrelationship issues, and a horde of undead beavers, whilst still finding time to come up with beaver based puns.
I recently rewatched Sharknado (for some reason), and I can confirm that there is more competence within the first ten minutes of Zombeavers than in all of Sharknado. We begin with two truckers played by John Mayer and Bill Burr, two actually funny actors, and the fact that writer-director Jordan Rubin relies entirely on practical effects rather than CGI is also laudable (that’s not to say all the practical effects are good, however). The screenplay is occasionally intentionally funny and the concept alone probably makes Zombeavers worth seeking out if you like that kind of thing. Perversely, however, the film’s competence is also its downfall. With a title like this, I want some so-bad-it’s-good nonsense to fill out the running time. There isn’t much of that here. It’s too knowing. Too self-aware.
Zombeavers is better than many would expect, and it has some surprisingly effective sequences (the human to beaver transformation scene is well worth a look), but ultimately it’s not enough to lift the film into the upper echelons required of a potential cult classic.
