Hundreds of Beavers (2024) is a silent black-and-white comedy film from director Mike Cheslik and writers Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews. It stars Tews as an applejack farmer turned fur trapper who vies to win the hand of a fur trader’s daughter by hunting and delivering him hundreds of beavers from the wilderness. The film debuted way back at Fantastic Fest in 2022 and has finally received a U.S. theatrical release and streaming debut on Amazon Prime Video. Why has this film captured the attention of the film world?
When I saw the trailer for this film and heard Film Twitter raving about it, I assumed it must be an elaborate troll job. Surely cinephiles the world over couldn’t be talking about this Looney Tunes-esque, silent film slapstick nonsense as a real quality film, right? Well, I had the opportunity to see for myself recently thanks to the Sacramento Midnight Film Festival, which hosted a special screening of the film. And if you get the chance to see it in a theater with an audience, I would highly recommend it, because it amplified the experience tenfold by allowing me to laugh along with a group of like-minded film buffs at the absurdity playing out on the screen! But is the film actually good, or just silly mindless fun? I found myself extremely impressed with the film’s ingenuity and commitment to the bit, delivering one of my favorite comedic films of the past few years!
By virtue of being a silent film, there isn’t a whole lot of opportunity to introduce our character and plot via complex exposition. As such, the storytelling must remain rather simplistic and surface-level to ensure the audience doesn’t get lost. Luckily, the premise is easy enough to understand, and the filmmakers do a tremendous job with non-verbal, visual storytelling to drive the plot forward rather than relying on copious dialogue. We meet our hero, Jean Kayak, as his applejack business is destroyed by beavers, leaving him to fend for himself in the wilderness. We then establish his goal: to gain the hand of a fur trader’s daughter by trading in beaver pelts by the hundreds. This sub-objective is especially enticing because Jean already has cause to want the beavers dead for what they did to him.
Jean encounters lots of hardships in the beginning, making his journey seem nearly impossible as time goes on. We wouldn’t care as much about his quest if it was trivially easy to accomplish: these beavers are smarter than they appear, foiling his increasingly-convoluted plans to capture and kill them with traps and other elaborate contraptions. Just the simple act of ensnaring a rabbit with a carrot as bait proves more difficult than expected, as he not only has to devise a way to catch the rabbit, but also to keep away other predators who may swoop in and eat his prize before he can return to collect the spoils. The beavers also begin to fight back against his successful plots, as a detective and police officer are hot on his tail threatening to expose him to the beaver population and punish him for his genocidal acts.
One thing I absolutely love about the film’s style of humor is the way it fully commits to every bit and sees it through to the end. A lazy way to write a film like this would be to write a series of silly sight gags and one-scene jokes that never reappear again. But all the jokes seem to build upon themselves more and more as the runtime goes on, reinventing themselves and finding new angles of humor to mine. For instance, early in the film, Jean builds a snowball and rolls it down a hill, causing it to grow in size and kill rabbits at the bottom. That imagery doesn’t return until much later in the film, when Jean escapes the beaver compound by running atop an out-of-control snowball growing bigger and faster by the second. That is an apt metaphor for the film as a whole: a giant snowball, running increasingly out of control and building itself up as the runtime goes along.
For the most part, I thought the overarching story and plot was well-done, with only a few hiccups. The story progresses naturally and is generally well-paced, even if the second half drags a bit longer than necessary. I was certainly concerned about the film’s runtime, believing there was a high chance that the film runs out of steam by the end, and it nearly does so, proving that 5-10 minutes or so could have been cut in the editing room. But the film re-engaged me by the end with a compelling climax that brought all the recurring sight-gags and jokes full-circle. I found that I cared deeply about Jean’s journey and his quest to marry the fur trader’s daughter, even though we only spend three or four short scenes with her and she never speaks a word. That is again a testament to the film’s willingness to beat its hero into the dirt: it makes his eventual triumph taste that much better in the end!
I also absolutely loved the visual style of the film, which gives the appearance of a low-budget indie but also has a lot of effort put into it. Rather than CGI animals, for example, the beavers are played by humans in shitty beaver costumes, which is absolutely hilarious and adds to the surreal feel of the film. The set design also has an intentional homemade feel to it, but nonetheless immerses us in this wilderness setting with a mix of strong practical design and visual effects. I also must give props to the actors for completely selling their roles, which is no easy feat in a silent film with no opportunity to deliver dialogue. This is especially true for Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, who carries every scene on his shoulders and delivers a silent slapstick tour de force performance that would make Buster Keaton proud. It’s the kind of performance that should get him tons of mainstream attention and more roles in the industry, though unfortunately I doubt that will happen.
Conclusion
Hundreds of Beavers is an absolute riot! I loved the film’s sense of humor and willingness to go all-in on every gag and bit to take them to levels we don’t expect. It’s rare for a comedy to stay ahead of me at every turn and continue to surprise me, and while not every joke lands, the vast majority of them deliver the goods and add up to one of the funniest films of the decade so far. This is a must-see for anyone who loves movies, and I’ll be recommending it to everyone I know for the foreseeable future!
VERDICT: A
All image rights belong to SRH and Amazon Prime Video.
-Austin Daniel
Scriptophile 