You’re dam lucky I can warn you about Zombeavers

I had such high hopes for “Zombeavers”. Okay, maybe high isn’t the right word. Moderate hopes? Well, in any event I guess I was hoping for a goofy, gruesome and funny schlockfest befitting its kooky central concept. The fact that it was from the producers of “American Pie”, “Cabin Fever” and “The Ring” even gave me some basis for my optimism.

I was promised an action-packed horror/ comedy about a group of college kids staying at a riverside cabin are terrorised by a colony of deadly zombie beavers. Well, it delivers on the zombie beaver front, I guess but action, comedy and horror? Not so much.

Saddled with wooden performances that still give the beavers nothing to sink their teeth into, this is flaccid, tedious monster mush that struggles to stand out from the crowd of similarly dumb-concept SyFy Original movies. The production values are pretty poor – I guess there wasn’t a lot of “American Pie”/ “Cabin Fever”/ “The Ring” money left after all. The creature design is shockingly bad, looking like mangy hand puppets or worse, moth-eaten examples of taxidermy being nudged and waggled from off camera and the film boasts some of the worst digital blood effects I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen both “Sharknado” films.

The personality-free cast fail to convince in their hackneyed, clichéd roles and the plot, such as it is, stumbles around aimlessly hoping it will accidentally come across a laugh or scare (occasionally they do) which might interest its audience. Lacking the subversive cleverness of “Cabin In The Woods”, the swaggering charm of “Tucker And Dale Vs Evil” or even the sleazy wit of “Piranha 3D” (although it tries to match all three) there’s little to recommend this vacuous and unoriginal creature feature. Of course, it’s your choice whether or not you watch it but remember: you’ll be dammed if you do and damned pleased if you don’t.