Zombeavers (2014)

Hey, I'm back again to drive some more nails in the coffin of the season. Looking at the movie list I've compiled, I realized just how few of the requests I've gotten I've actually covered recently, so it's time to make up for that. I closed my eyes, stuck my finger out, and it just happened to land on this little indie horror comedy that I have really been meaning to check out. How could I not want to check it out? It's a movie about zombie beavers.

ZOMBIE. BEAVERS. EXCLAMATION POINT.

As a fan of zombies and beautifully silly concepts, I would be doing myself a massive disservice by not at least trying to watch this film. And I really needed this because the last zombie film I covered was so underwhelming that I found myself questioning my love of the zombie sub-genre. True, I could crawl into an old favourite to revisit why I love these movies. Hell, it wasn't very long ago that I marathoned nearly the entire The Walking Dead television series because I told someone I'd give it another shot after giving up on it.

I had my reasons. Bitter spite-fueled reasons.

Getting to our most assuredly silly zombie film, the movie opens on two guys driving a truck full of hazardous chemicals contained in various drums in the back. These two men immediately look familiar, as one of them happens to be comedian Bill Burr. The other one was a bit harder to peg though, but I couldn't shake that feeling I knew it was. It turns out that the other guy is John Mayer. yes, that John Mayer. The two men exchange in some conversation, with Burr not paying much attention as Mayer seems to be coming onto him.

If only he could simply find the words to tell Bill that his body is a wonderland.

The awkward sexual advances quickly get pushed aside though when Burr slams into a deer on the road, splattering it's entrails and extrails all over the the vehicle. This collision also causes one of the barrels of chemicals to fall out of the truck. It rolls down into a river where it floats down it before finally hitting a beaver dam softly. Apparently that soft stop was all it took for it to finally spring a leak and it sprays the beavers, leading to the obvious outcome.

It's so beautiful...*wipes away a tear*

From there, we see a local fishing redneck get killed and we're then teleported to the car of our main characters: three sorority girls going to a cabin in the woods. We've got the nerdy one, the bitchy one, and the sweet one. I'd complain about how they're using tired old cliched stereotypes but...that's actually the point. This movie is as much comedy as it is horror. They get to the cabin and we get the wonderful sight of the bitchy one's dog pissing on something in the house almost immediately after getting inside. I don't like animals being hurt, I really don't, but I also don't like the idea of dogs being allowed to piss on other people's belongings. And in the case of a movie like this where I know no actual animals are hurt, I hope the dog dies horribly for being a little bastard.

Yes, I'm that asshole who laughs when annoying animals die in movies. Kids too.

The girls decide to go out on the lake after meeting their neighbor and the bitchy one takes off her top, because someone had to. Soon after, the sweet one sees a beaver dam and beaver lodge and goes to see if she can spots some beavers. The others follow and it is noted that there is some green dried liquid, which the bitchy girl believes to be dried beaver urine. They can't seem to find the beavers though, as it's too soon in the movie for them to die, so a bear shows up instead. Before they can freak out too much, a hunter shows up to scare it off and to also tell them to cover their midsections. Apparently he's offended by exposed midriffs, for some discernible reason.

"A bare midriff murdered my momma...I've been huntin' that midriff all my life."

So, after he weirds out the girls enough, they leave. Before we go further, I want to point out one of my favourite things that just happened. The bitchy girl, Zoe, who is topless through that whole thing only covers herself when the bear appears. The bear is what she didn't want to see her tits. The bear. That's is fucking hilarious to me and I can't really figure out why, but I've been chuckling about it all day. Back in the cabin, they continue about their girl time, with the sweet-natured Jenn still being a bit off due to an obvious falling out she had with her boyfriend, Sam, who she was seen texting earlier. Apparently the reason she's upset with him is because there's a picture of him cheating on her with another girl online taken at a party. Ah, the internet, where secrets get drawn out quicker than a Dragon Ball Z fight.

Five episodes from now, I'm sure he'll actually hit somebody.

The only thing is that she can't see the girl's face, so they don't know who is, which means it's probably one of the two girls there. Originally I was thinking Zoe, but now I'm thinking Mary because she's looking particularly guilty. Moving on though, they hear a loud noise outside and go to see what's out there. It turns out that it's their boyfriends and Zoe knew they were coming. This includes the cheating dickbag, Sam. Mary tries to get them to leave, but Jenn assures her it's alright and from there we almost immediately cut to the other two girls fucking their boyfriends very loudly.

Oh, loud sex. How I miss you so.

Sam tries to get Jenn to give him a little of that action the other guys are getting, but all she gives him is a kissing to get him excited, and swift knee to the giblets. She heads to the bathroom to take a shower to wash off the sleazy ex from her knee, but she's surprised to find a beaver in the tub. A zombie beaver, or zombeaver, if you will. She reacts as one would when faced with a undead rodent with large wood chewing teeth and goes to get help. The group goes into the bathroom where the creature seems to have vanished, which means a jumpscare is going to happen.

"Avon calling!"

Buck, Zoe's chubby dipshit boyfriend, come on down and be the useless character we all know you're here to be! Yeah, he and Sam aren't any help, so it falls to Tommy, Mary's beau, to beat the thing in half. He literally beats it until it splits in half. That's brutal. but they don't do the obvious thing, which would be to either sever or crush the head. This means that it isn't actually dead, but is rather stunned. Well, in as much as zombie beavers are capable of being stunned, I suppose. They bag it up and toss it outside on the porch. In a massive plot twist, it's gone in the morning and Jenn is the only one who finds where this whole thing is going to be a bit like that one television show with Grick Rimes and his son Coral. Just with more beavers.

"They're zombie beavers, Coral! They eat you rather than you eating them! That's sexual innuendo, son!"

The other all ignore the missing beaver carcass, assuming an animal came and dragged it off, ignoring the fact that any animal large enough to drag off a fairly large beaver carcass might actually also attack them. But hey, they also ignored the fact that the beaver had no pupils and that the cabin smells like dog urine, so whatever. Out into the lake they go, trying to coax Jenn in with them. And wouldn't you know it? Five seconds after walking ankle deep into the water, the zombeavers show up and Buck gets his foot chewed off. After the idiots swim for the wooden raft in the middle of the lake rather than the nearby land, the things start chewing through it while Jenn runs to go call for help at s off the cabin, I guess. But the severed carcass beaver tries to get acquainted with her beaver before she can accomplish this.

The sex jokes are really hard to avoid when the movie constantly sets them up all on its own.

She manages to save herself from the most painful oral sex of her life though and back at the lake, Sam decides to do what I've desired for a while now as he grabs Zoe's dog and throws it to the beavers, who then kill it. But they don't get much of a head start in running, as Zoe thrashes about because her dog is now dead. I get it, I do, but I just don't care. The dog was a little shit and, while Sam is a douche, I agree that it's better to sacrifice the annoying yip dog that pisses on everything rather than let your friends get murdered. Although, I wouldn't have really cared if he chucked Buck instead. Buck's almost as annoying, but at least he doesn't piss on everything.

He just wears a beanie to go swimming...*sighs*

They all end up back in the cabin where they discover the phone lines are out now and that the beavers now have them well and good surrounded. And it's when everything is at its worse that Zoe clues Jenn into the fact that Sam and Mary banged, which surprises both Jenn and Tommy. Worried that Buck with bleed out before they can deal with the immediate problem of being eaten, Zoe and Tommy both leave the drama triangle with him to go try and get help. But the road turns out to be blocked by a tree, which would mean that they'd just try to go around it, right? Nope! All hope is lost! At least until Tommy and Zoe finds the hunter from earlier's truck and get some weapons from it and Tommy gets crushed under a tree. Poor guy, crushed to death right after finding out his girlfriend cheated on him with a useless twat.

It's almost as bad as that time he caught an STDemon. He really should've used a condom.

Smyth, the aforementioned hunter, shows up to bail out Zoe and Buck and they all head back to the cabin which the others have since boarded up as they fend off zombie beaver attacks mostly via the girls awkwardly poking at the beavers that poke their heads in. This leaves the more capable characters now stranded outside with flesh-eating beavers though, so they make a run for the neighbors who we got a brief scene of a little while prior showing the old lady's husband being a pervert as she went to bed and he reached down to pet his dog, instead petting a zombie beaver.

I guess golden retrievers must have much coarser fur than I realized if he can't tell the difference.

This means it's not too shocking to see both of them dead upon entering the house. What happens back in the other cabin though is bit more shocking. Mary is laying down, presumably taking a nap, and Jenn enters the room an begins to approach her in a seductive manner. Mary awakes and believes that this means Jenn was so upset because she actually has feelings for her and the idea of her fucking Sam upsets her about as much as the idea of anyone fucking Sam upsets the audience. But despite being the stereotypical smarty pants of the film, Mary couldn't be more wrong. Jenn isn't here to scissor her timbers.

Jenn's simply got a wicked bad toothache.

Yes, it seems the getting scratched or bitten or whatever means you become a beaver-human-zombie hybrid, as Jenn sprouts not only beaver teeth but a beaver tail. Mary and Sam both barricade the door with Jenn locked inside and over in the other house Smyth and Zoe find out about this plot twist as Buck attacks them, eating Smyth's face and leaving Zoe stuck in a house with zombie beaver people. She makes the tough call between jumping out the upstairs window to what may be certain death...or being devoured alive. She chooses the broken glass and hard ground. Back in the cabin, the remaining two end up hiding in the bathroom. When faced with certain doom, Mary forces Sam to strip so she can check him for wounds, which he has none due to him being useless. He then tells her to strip, which then leads to sex while the house burns following a beaver setting itself on fire..

May as well go out fucking, right?

As it stands, Tommy died via fallen tree, Smyth died via eaten face, annoying dog died via being a distraction, Jenn now has a fucking fleshy human beaver tail she's slapping against the floor, Buck is a stumpy beaver zombie guy, and Zoe is potentially dead after jumping out a window. Our last two characters are in a burning house full of zombie beavers. And they've chosen to take time out to ride one another like horny ponies. They even say something about how they plan to get out of there, as if they aren't begging for death. But don't worry, their stupidity doesn't go unrewarded as Jenn bursts out of the floor and tries to reenact my favourite scene from Porn of the Dead.

Cock tastes like chicken!

Mary runs and Zoe shows up driving the hunter's truck through the cabin, saving Mary as they both get the fuck out of there. As they make their escape, the now beaver zombified Smyth shoots at them and they hit a tree. Zoe tries cranking the truck up while the various creatures all approach them, including the bear from earlier which is now a zombie beaver bear. A zombie beaver bear. But despite all of that, she gets it going and they make it back to the fallen trees where they have to go walking now, because driving around the trees is still impossible for some reason. That's when Mary aimsa  gun at Zoe, assuming she's been bitten due to all the scratches and blood. Zoe reassures her that the wounds are from jumping out of a window, then Mary starts to change instead, Zoe buries an axe in her head, then wanders off. And before we're allowed to feel a sigh of relief for her, the two chemical transporting truckers from the opening show up and plow her down because, again, Burr wasn't looking while driving. We then get an after-credits scene of bees spreading the virus, setting up a sequel that would surely have to be titled Zombees.

Sometimes you just can't avoid the obvious jokes, no matter how hard you try to.

Zombeavers was a very fun movie. It played up various cliches while also managing to play with the audience's expectations a bit. I will admit that it actually fooled me a few times with where it ultimately ended up going and I like that. It's hard to find surprises in horror movies, especially when they trail into comedy territory. But more than just simply being a horror comedy, this film really is a horror spoof in many ways. It manages to do a better job at mocking stereotypes from the genre than the Scary Movie series has done in five movies. Or are there six now? I can't get track of those train wrecks, nor do I want to try to. The point is this movie is hilarious without ever feeling like it's being needlessly stupid.

No, it's stupid with a purpose. It's cleverly stupid.

It uses the trappings of the horror film to covertly exist as a perfect send-up of the staples of many horror films, and it does it without a single Wayans brother or nonsensical recreation of a popular movie in sight. This is a horror spoof done right, whether that was the intention of the filmmakers or not, and I loved every frame of it. Sure, I was kidding with the whole Zombees bit but, let me tell you, I would EAGERLY watch that if they made it. Does you know why? Because it would be with the hope that it would be as much fun as this movie was. It also might be pretty interesting seeing what zombie bee people look like. Go see this movie. It deserves to be enjoyed. So, until The Pain shows up in the sequel to save the world from the bee plague by ultimately having Big Boss blow him up while he brings the bees to him, I'll be here wishing I could afford to own a console capable of playing MGSV. Later days, bleeders.

And be careful when receiving oral sex from someone with severe overbite.