Kris Van der Bijl

The 2014 horror comedy movie Zombeavers is about a group of college students defending themselves from mutant, zombified beavers. But the attacking zombeavers aren’t what the movie is really about. Alongside their war (survival?) with the zombeavers, the six college students – three female and three male – navigate love, betrayal, pride, and jealousy amongst themselves. None survive what they go through at the cabin.

This is a ridiculous movie. Taking it seriously is also silly. Avoid taking me seriously because I don’t want to be called silly. Doing so will make you equally as silly.

I’ve written about the silly horror comedy Slotherhouse in another blog. It is my second lowest-rated post. Let’s get this one to similar numbers.

Zombeavers opens with two men in a delivery truck transporting unnamed toxic waste. The driver is not watching the road ahead and runs over a deer, practically disintegrating it. This causes a barrel of toxic waste to roll off the back and fall into the water. It flows downstream to a beaver lodge. The barrel is pierced by a stick. Neon green liquid (the exact cliche colour in your mind) sprays all over their dam. The beaver’s home is now infected because of the stupidity and laziness of the two men.

We’re then introduced to the movie’s protagonists, three sorority sisters out for a weekend free from boys. I struggled to follow any of the character’s names and had to make my own system to follow the story. There’s the sad Blonde whose boyfriend just cheated on her with a mysterious black-haired girl. There’s black hair with glasses whose aunt owns the lakeside cabin they’re visiting. I call her Glasses. And black hair, no glasses. We get to see a picture of her boyfriend’s six-inch penis. She’s also the one who swims topless when they arrive at the lake because, apparently, this movie needed a topless scene.

The three women meet a neighbour, but she doesn’t provide much to the plot (other than dying). The first significant person they meet is Smyth, a manly man in a cowboy hat who shoots his shotgun to save the three women from a potential bear attack. He mentions they should “cover up,” specifically starring at the bikini-less girl because this area is family-friendly.

The women return to their cabin and do all those cliche things you’d expect from a Hollywood depiction of female friendship. Because you know how girls act: they play never-have-I-ever and truth-or-dare. They throw popcorn at each other while wearing tiny shorts.

Important to the plot, Blonde reminds Glasses about how they’ve made out plenty of times. Glasses responds that it was only to make guys jealous, so it’s pointless to do now.

But their games are interrupted by a banging sound.

And, of course, it’s the boys scaring them. Glasses and no-glasses go off to have loud sex. This leaves Blonde with her cheating ex-boyfriend alone on the couch because every girl will leave their friends alone with their ex-boyfriend if it means having sex with their own.

The ex-boyfriend, whose name I also never noticed, apologises and tries to get back with the Blonde. She pushes him off and goes to take a shower. Alone, half-dressed, she hears a banging from the cupboard. She opens it to find a rabid zombeaver.

The attacks that the movie title predicted begin. The rest of the events involve the group of six trying to save themselves. Granted, I’ve never been attacked by a horde of zombeavers, but as with all horror movies, it’s difficult not to judge their decisions.

A standout moment is when the cheating ex-boyfriend throws a dog to distract the zombeavers, just in case you haven’t hated him already.

But, to be honest, the characters could be more likeable. The one I felt the most sympathy for was the boyfriend of the girl with glasses. He takes charge and actually tries to put together an escape plan after the group realises that the zombeavers have eaten through the telephone wires. And, unlike the other two boyfriends, he’s physically fit.

He also has the most minor real reason to help the group. Remember the mysterious black-haired girl that the ex-boyfriend was caught kissing? It turns out to be glasses, his girlfriend. He doesn’t react much, and I wouldn’t be surprised if his strategy of being the hero is more of a response to escaping the toxic dynamics of his girlfriend’s social group.

He’s the first to die when a group of zombeavers cut down a tree. It falls and crushes him.

I don’t understand why both Glasses and the Blonde are attracted to the weaker, dog-sacrificing ex-boyfriend. He also habitually talks over both women and interrupts their conversations.

I was confused when Glasses and the Blonde were reading a book about beavers.

Note that the ex-boyfriend didn’t think that both women ever read.

Glasses read this out loud:

“[beavers] live in family groups of colonies and will defend their lodge against other beavers. [They have] keen senses of hearing, smell, and touch. They live up to 24 years.”

Ex-boyfriend notes that they’re all 24 years old, drawing a connection between humans and beavers. Then, when glasses read that beavers are “monogamous”, he interjects by saying, “Not like us.”

If the movie’s attempt to connect beavers and humans isn’t clear, get ready for the final, bizarre act.

Glasses goes to bed (a perfectly rational choice when your cabin is being attacked by beavers and you half your friend group might be dead). But she is soon awoken by the Blonde, dressed in a bikini, sliding up her body.

Remember that game of truth or dare when they mentioned that they kiss? Now it comes full circle, and Blonde will finally get what her ex-boyfriend can’t provide.

That is until Blonde begins to transform into a beaver. Her front teeth elongate, and a beaver’s tale shoots out from her bum. She turns into a zombeaver, but not like those who began their lives as beavers. She turns into a half-human, half-beaver mutant, desperate to eat her friend.

Luckily for Glasses, she gets away and locks herself in the bathroom with the ex-boyfriend. Then, while being attacked by the zombeaver-fied blonde woman, glasses and the ex-boyfriend release their own sexual tension and bang.

It goes without saying that this was the wrong time and place for this.
The Blonde-woman/ beaver mutant breaks it and kills the ex-boyfriend by eating his dick. As one does, Glasses runs out of the house and escapes. At the same time, the woman without glasses, who managed to escape her run-in with humans turning into beavers, shows up in Whyte’s car.

Both women drive off.

All seems well as they drive into the rising dawn, but it wouldn’t be a horror comedy if everything ends here.

The road is blocked, and the two women decide to make it to the nearest town on foot. It’s here when Glasses sees that the other woman is covered in blood. She knows that she has been bitten and will turn into a zombeaver. So, Glasses raises an axe and tells her friend that she must kill her. While the girl without glasses appears to accept her fate, she resists.

The girl without glasses pulls out a gun and shoots her friend.

Now, walking alone, infected with the virus, she approaches the nearest town for safety. She sees a car, a delivery truck, to be specific. It’s the same one from earlier.

Just as the two clueless men didn’t see the deer at the beginning of the movie, they don’t see the girl without glasses. They run her over, and the credits roll.

Why do I question whether this is a feminist allegory? It involves seeing the zombeavers as a representation of outsider invading a female space. And, not just any outsider, but a mutant animal created from the male truck drivers negligence from not watching the road at the beginning of the movie.

If they had not existed, the movie would have been about three female friends on a holiday interrupted by their boyfriends. It’s safe to assume that, under the influence of the amount of alcohol that college students drink, the secret affair would have come out. The women would have fought, the men would be in the way, and the women would either leave the trip as friends who sorted out their differences or as enemies who were dead to each other.

While the infected zombeavers are what they fear, the real goal that they need to overcome is their friendship. If they were to survive and leave together, they needed to work together. They did not, so they all died and could not return to their lives before the weekend away.

The movie is at pains to point out that the men are annoying intruders in what should have been a weekend away from men, where the women can swim topless without men telling them to cover up and without zombeavers attacking them only because two male truck drivers couldn’t keep their load to themselves.

Is this a far-fetched argument? If I had time and energy, it could be more substantial. But I also know there are better-starting points than this movie. At the end of the day, it is a silly horror movie called zombeavers that a bored critic takes seriously just because they can.

And I can’t wait to do it again with the thousands of silly horror comedies out there.