Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #83: Zombeavers (2014).

Three girlfriends, Mary (Rachel Melvin), Zoe (Courtney Palm) and Jenn (Lexi Atkins), take a road trip to a local lake retreat for a relaxing weekend in the forest where they're free of their parents and the stresses of college life. They're also free of pesky boys, until it emerges that Zoe knew three of them were coming: Sam (Hutch Dano), Buck (Peter Gilroy) and Tommy (Jake Weary). Mary and Jenn are quite bemused when they arrive, but they have heaps more than the males to worry about. Shortly before this sojourn, two truck drivers delivering a load of toxic chemicals across the country accidentally hit a deer and subsequently lost one of their canisters, which opened and spilled into the lake where numerous beavers lived. After fatally ingesting the chemicals, the beavers were mutated into bloodthirsty fiends. Now, the girls and boys (and one of the girls' pet dog) must band together to avoid becoming beaver food - and still satisfy their uncontrollable sex drives.

Obviously, Zombeavers is a very naughty little movie; in fact, you could even call it an exploitation film. But I love it because it consciously tries to infuse and invert two different comedy subgenres (the horror comedy and the sex comedy) and succeeds with both without ever feeling forced. Since Scream and American Pie respectively launched and reignited those comedy brands, too many of their successors have derivatively stuck to the same formulas and gradually worn them very thin. Here, director Jordan Rubin and his fellow writers Al and Jonathan Kaplan have hit upon a really fresh and intentionally ridiculous premise which is executed with vibrancy and insatiable energy. Best of all for such a movie, there is no comprise on the raciness (which, of course, goes right down to "beaver" also being slang for vagina), profanity or violence. The young cast also evidently relished their work here, particularly Palm as the sassy Zoe and Dano in a huge departure from his breakout role on the Disney Channel sitcom Zeke & Luther. It's definitely not for the prudish, and it may make you think twice before dipping into a forest lake again, but you could never call it timid or clichéd. Zombeavers is a horror/sex comedy as entertaining as they come.