Hundreds of Beavers premiered at Fantastic Fest in 2022 and released digitally in April of 2024.

I didn’t know much about the Mike Cheslik directed film prior to seeing it. I had heard the name and initially believed it was a nature documentary. I was very wrong. After reading the description I thought it might be a horror-comedy in the vein of 2015’s Zombeavers. Wrong again. It’s a genre-defying mishmash comprised of absurdist slapstick humor, and I absolutely loved it.

Hundreds of Beavers Plot

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Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) has his life flipped upside down when beavers destroy his home. While attempting to survive in the brutal cold of winter, he finds himself at odds with various wildlife. Rabbits, racoons, wolves and beavers continuously outsmart the dimwitted man. It’s a hilarious battle between man and beast, and the beavers have the upper hand.

The Critique

Hundreds of Beavers is a film that’s difficult to describe. I’ve never used hard drugs; however, I have to imagine the experience of taking psychotropics may be similar to this viewing experience. Every animal is played by a human in a crudely worn costume. They are the types of costumes you’d expect to see worn by the employee of a family-owned store, making minimum-wage to dance on the sidewalk while advertising a blow-out sale.

The black-and-white, mostly silent-film is a throwback to the days of Buster Keaton. The performances are physical and the comedy is slapstick. But it doesn’t stop at simply being an homage to the silent-era. Every passing scene reveals another layer to this uniquely assembled mishmash of a story, proving itself as a one-of-a-kind comedy that defies imagination. We see elements from Looney Tunes, 1920’s cinema and even the NES gaming console, and thanks to a pitch-perfect visual style and an unwavering dedication to the gags, it all works.

It would be easy to dismiss Hundreds of Beavers as being silly non-sense (which it is), but the silliness is concocted with such precision that it transcends itself. I was immersed in the farcical world it created, transported back to a time of Woody the Woodpecker cartoons and bowls of cereal on a Saturday morning. It raises the question early on… “How long can it carry this absurdism and still work?” The answer is indefinitely. It is surprising that the film boasts a runtime of nearly two-hours considering it’s essentially the premise of a fifteen-minute animated short; however, at no point did it feel stagnant or drawn-out.

In Conclusion

Hundreds of Beavers is a laugh-out-loud riot. The fact that we get this in the same year as Sasquatch Sunset — a film with zero dialogue that literally stars Jesse Eisenberg as a bigfoot — is truly a gift, and a sign that there is an audience for these types of unconventional movies. Hundreds of Beavers is as creative as it is entertaining. I laughed until my sides hurt and I can’t wait to see what Cheslik delivers next.

9/10

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