“Hundreds of Beavers” is a little quirky independent film which never stopped amusing or surprising me. Steadily building up its comic momentum along its hilariously loony narrative, the movie provides a series of very funny and creative moments to be savored, and it will certainly linger on your mind for a long time along with those many beavers in the movie.

The movie, which is set in somewhere in the northwestern region of US during the 19th century, begins with a musical sequence humorously introducing an applejack salesman named Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, who wrote the screenplay along with director/editor Mike Cheslik in addition to serving as a co-producer) – and how his big orchard is unfortunately destroyed not long before snowy winter comes. Naturally becoming quite cold and hungry, Kayak desperately tries to find any possible option for his survival, and the movie serves us a number of broad but amusing slapstick moments reminiscent of those old silent film comedy films including Charlie Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush” (1925). Despite the frequent absence of dialogues, the comic setup of these moments is clearly and precisely conveyed to us, and the movie always finds something to surprise or amuse us as its hero fails to achieve his goal again and again.

Anyway, after numerous silly but uproarious incidents of trials and errors, Kayak manages to survive, and then he comes to work as a fur trapper after getting some help from some other fur trapper. As he subsequently becomes a bit more skillful in hunting those furry creatures out there, he finds himself very attracted to the young and beautiful daughter of a local merchant, who, of course, does not approve of this at all even while dealing with Kayak as usual.

Like many heroes of the silent comedy films of Buster Keaton, Kayak certainly gets quite determined to get the merchant’s approval of marrying his pretty daughter, and we soon see how he concocts a number of funny and clever plans to catch a lot more of those furry animals out there. His usual targets are beavers, but, what do you know, those beavers turn out to be rather challenging targets as they are building something huge on a nearby river, and there are even two certain beavers investigating on a series of killings committed by him (How they look like is another big laugh in the film, by the way).

As far as I can remember, more than 300 beavers are killed on and off the screen in the film, but I assure you that you do not have to worry at all even if you are an ardent animal lover. All the animal figures in the film are not real as being played by the actors wearing animal suits or presented via animation, and this silly surreal touch is actually more enhanced by the grainy black and white film style of the movie. At first, this certainly looks outrageous to us, but we somehow come to accept this as being more amused by a considerable amount of humor and wit behind this. While the movie gleefully pushes its premise and style further, we are more impressed in addition to being more tickled than before, and you will not mind at all even when the movie throws several hilariously gruesome moments later in the story.

In the end, everything culminates to a big clash between our hero and hundreds of beavers trying to do much more than stopping him. I will not tell you anything about what they are willing to do to him, but I can tell you instead that they can be as unpleasant and disturbing as those big parakeets in Hayao Miyazaki’s recent Oscar-winning animation film “The Boy and the Heron” (2023).

According to the Wikipedia, its production budget was only $150,000, but the movie does not look that cheap at all as Cheslik, who incidentally made a feature film debut here and after previously making several short films, and his small crew members tried as much as they could with their small budget. You will instantly see how Cheslik added low-budget special effects here and there in the film, but the overall result is not only effective but also serves well the surreal comic style of the movie on the whole, and I particularly enjoyed the sheer comic lunacy of the climax sequence where our hero is frantically running away from hundreds of beavers.

Once the shooting was completed in early 2020, Cheslik and his small crew members had to go through a rather long period of post-production before the film was eventually premiered at Fantastic Fest in 2022. The movie subsequently got more attention as being shown at several other film festivals, and then it received a video on demand (VOD) release in US early in this year. So far, it has drawn lots of positive responses from audiences and critics. and that is how it came to draw my attention several weeks ago. Although I was a bit tired at last night, my mind soon got stimulated by its quirky style and naughty sense of humor, and I and a friend of mine had a really fun time together as getting constantly amused throughout our viewing.

In conclusion, “Hundreds of Beavers” is a truly singular comic piece of work to be admired and appreciated, and it is definitely something worthwhile to check out if you are really looking for something fresh and different. In short, this is one of the most impressive films of this year in addition to being one of the funniest ones I have ever seen during last several years, and I am already ready to revisit it someday for getting more laughs.