A trio of spunky college girls head into the wilderness for a weekend of girltime in an isolated, lakeside cabin - but their plans are disrupted, first by the arrival of their horny boyfriends and then by an invasion of flesh-eating, zombie beavers.
Yes, Zombeavers is as daft as it sounds and it knows it. It takes its crass premise and runs with it, resulting in a near-perfect blend of teen comedy and OTT gore-horror.
Directed by Jordan Rubin from a script co-written by himself and Jon & Al Kaplan, the humour is base (come on, they're talking about beavers nearly non-stop, what did you expect?), there's some sex and skin, gruesome beaver-related injuries, a genuine sense of spam-in-a-cabin jeopardy, decent performances from the central cast, surprising twists and delightfully low-budget special effect monsters.
The killer beavers appear to be a combination of puppets and animatronics, but it doesn't matter because the levity and general joie de vivre that clearly went into making this movie carries you through.
From the deadpan humour of the opening scene to the Sinatra-esque theme over the final credits and the wonderful, post-credits, tease of a possible sequel idea (that is so obvious when you think of it I'm surprised no one hasn't already made this movie), Zombeavers just continually knocks it out the park.
Demonstrating that he knows my tastes so well, Paul got me this DVD for my birthday back in 2014 and we watched it that very day when he popped down to hand over my presents (my birthday wasn't for another week-and-a-half, but we weren't going to pass up a chance to see a film called Zombeavers) and we were both genuinely surprised by how good it was.
Originally, I think we'd both thought from the trailers that it would fall into "so bad, it's good" category, but it's actually really well-made, a helluva lotta fun and rather clever. It is genuinely one of the best all-round low-budget, horror films I'd seen that year.
One thing that struck us, in particular, was its subtle subversion of the horror movie staple of the "Final Girl" - a character you can normally pick out within the first five or ten minutes of horror movie.
Paul even said he might have to pick up a copy for himself
And please, please, please Mr Rubin, make ZomBEES as soon as soon as humanly possible - you've got a guaranteed sale here!
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