Saturday, October 8, 2016

Movie Review: "Zombeavers" (2014)

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Movie"Zombeavers"
Director: Jordan Rubin
Year: 2014
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 17 minutes

A group of college girls head to a rural cabin in the woods for a weekend getaway. Once there, they are attacked by a horde of mutant, bloodthirsty zombie beavers.

"Zombeavers" is directed by Jordan Rubin, who also wrote the screenplay for the film along with Jon and Al Kaplan. This movie stars many young, upcoming actors such as Rachel Melvin, Cortney Palm, Lexi Atkins, Hutch Dano, Jake Weary, Peter Gilroy, and Rex Linn. With a title like "Zombeavers," you pretty much know what you are getting into by watching this flick. This is a movie about mutant zombie beavers that attack a group of vacationing college kids while they are on their backwoods trip. This sounds completely stupid, and it absolutely is, but unlike many horror movies from the 2010's that are just plain terrible, this one KNOWS it's stupid and that's kind of the point. In addition to the absurd premise, the screenplay has some absolutely ridiculous dialogue to go along with it. The members of this cast do their best to sell their terribly written lines, but we can't help but laugh at their feeble attempts to get them out without laughing themselves.

When it comes to the special effects implemented on these mutant beavers, it is all done in a cheesy way, and again, intentionally so. There is also practical makeup work on the human/beaver hybrids, but despite their absurd look, the effects work is actually pretty well done. The blood and gore comes in abundance to an over-the-top level for a darkly comedic effect. As a comedy, "Zombeavers" plays with a lot of genre tropes and uses horror movie clichés in a satirical manner without looking like a complete parody. It also has moments of gratuitous nudity and obligatory sex scenes, as well as a creepy local type who appears wherever our protagonists seem to be as per most horror films. It does successfully manage to turn a few of these tropes on their heads, using them in an unexpected manner, and for this, we appreciate what it tries to differently.

These animal themed horror comedies are not uncommon, especially now where every dollar store TV network churns out some form of megaladon/beetle/poodle hybrid film every 4-6 months. Some are pretty good, some are downright awful, and "Zombeavers" falls somewhere in the middle. It is ludicrous, but still winds up being sort of fun in its insanity.

My Rating: 5/10
BigJ's Rating: 5.5/10
IMDB's Rating: 4.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 69%
Do we recommend this movie: Meh.
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One year ago, we were being scared by: "Life After Beth"

Two years ago, we were being scared by: "The Others"

Three years ago, we were being scared by"Sinister"

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