Reel Review: Hundreds of Beavers (2023)

“Hundreds of Beavers” is a wildly charming masterpiece of inventive and inspired indie filmmaking that’s almost impossible not to love.

In an endless sea of low-budget indie genre films vying to occupy our eyeballs, 2018’s Lake Michigan Monster still managed to make a splash. The debut of Milwaukee-based filmmakers Ryland Brickson Cole Tews and Mike Cheslik, it stood out by making the most of its limited resources, crafting a unique aesthetic of stylized digital effects and high contrast black and white cinematography, not to mention being really damn funny. 

Five long years later, the duo is back with their follow-up, Hundreds of Beavers. And it seems like they learned a thing or two in the intervening years, as their new film takes what made Lake Michigan Monster special and levels up in every way imaginable.

Whereas Monster had one tentacle in the real world, at least up until its gonzo underwater-set final act, Beavers is a nearly entirely digital creation, with elaborate post-production worlds built atop a snowy Wisconsin landscape (most of it is faked, but as a fellow midwesterner, I could tell the snow was very real).

Creating something that looks realistic would likely be beyond most indie films’ budgetary restrictions, so Cheslik’s visual effects instead conjure a hyper-stylized world, leaning into the artifice to deliver a fascinating hybrid of live-action and cartoon.

Personally, knowing that many shots likely involved the actors flailing madly in front of a green screen only makes the whole thing funnier.

Hundreds of Beavers feels like a bold step into a new mode of effects-heavy indie filmmaking but does so using one of the oldest story archetypes of them all: Man vs. Nature.

The man in question is one Jean Kayak (Tews), introduced in a stirring singalong as a successful applejack purveyor beloved by the hard-drinking fur traders passing through.

He ends up getting a bit too high on his own supply and loses his whole operation through a combination of drunken negligence and beaver-related misfortune. Forced to start over, he attempts to survive in the harsh wilderness but finds it harder to catch a meal.

After many mishaps, he manages to work his way into the fur trade, learning from a Master Trapper (Wes Tank) and romancing the local Furrier (Olivia Graves) along the way. But her possessive father (Doug Mancheski) won’t let Jean have his daughter’s hand unless he brings him (cue the title card) hundreds of beavers, forcing Jean to up his trapping game, running afoul of the industrious beaver population.

If Hundreds of Beavers can be said to have a theme, it could be its farcical take on the ever-evolving relationship between humans and the natural world.

Jean not only learns from his failures but figures out how to use those lessons to his advantage, and the animals, in turn, learn to evade his tactics — and, in some cases, fight back.

It could be seen as an analog to the human experience, going from survival to subsistence to industrial exploitation of resources.

The setting seems deliberate, too; fur was a massive industry in Wisconsin and throughout the midwest, with many animals being hunted nearly to extinction for their pelts.

It’s entirely possible I’m reaching for that interpretation, but…

At the end of the day, Hundreds of Beavers is a wildly funny, endlessly inventive, wholly singular piece of filmmaking, no matter how you look at it.

Much like its predecessor, it’s kind of a lot, each moment crammed with elaborate visual and physical gags.

At one point, I began to wonder if it was too much of a good thing but found myself powerless to resist its charms, cackling with glee as the wacky setpieces continued to build on each other. Looney Tunes is an obvious inspiration, with Jean as the hapless Wile E. Coyote and the animals as his collective Road Runner, but it also seems to draw from Charlie Chaplin films, The Oregon Trail, and early American adventure yarns.

Tews is often the only human onscreen (at least the only one not dressed in a hilarious knockoff animal costume), and he carries the film much like his oversized dead raccoon cap.

He’s a wonderfully gifted physical comedian, throwing himself into wacky bits with an almost Bruce-Campbellian level of commitment, even having to walk barefoot and shirtless in the snow. He’s aided by Cheslik’s sharp editing and hilarious visual gags, with running bits piled on top of each other and paying off in a satisfying fashion.

Really, all aspects of the filmmaking come together beautifully, from Chris Ryan’s era-spanning score; to Rob Barito’s sound design, drawing from vintage cartoons and video games; to Brandon Kirkham’s delightfully expressive puppets; to Casey Harris’s costumes that manage to be both era-appropriate and extremely silly.

All the elements work to amplify the humor, serving the film’s elaborately silly vision.

There are things I could quibble with about Hundreds of Beavers, like its slightly overlong length or a rather stereotypical depiction of a Native character, but it’s hard to find too much fault in a movie as winningly absurd as this one.

I was left thoroughly charmed and surprisingly inspired by Cheslik and Tews’s ingenuity — all you need is some friends in animal costumes, some good editing software, and plenty of gumption, and you can make some magic.

Hundreds of Beavers has been making a splash on the festival circuit, earning critical acclaim at festivals around the globe. The film had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, and recently made its Canadian Premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival (where it was screened for this review). Keep an eye out for this absolute gem and see it as soon as you can.