Hundreds of Beavers

Hundreds of Beavers is a 2022 American independent slapstick comedy film directed by Mike Cheslik in his feature directorial debut, and written by Cheslik and Ryland Tews. The black-and-white film stars Tews as applejack maker Jean Kayak who, in trying to win the hand of a merchant's daughter, finds himself embroiled in a conflict with beavers.

Cheslik and Tews, who previously collaborated on multiple projects, developed the idea for Hundreds of Beavers in October 2018. The film was shot on a low budget of $150,000 in rural Wisconsin and Michigan across twelve weeks during the winter of 2019–20. Editing and post-production were completed in 2022. Inspiration for the film came from comedians such as Abbott and Costello, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and The Three Stooges, and it was designed to be like watching a let's play video.

Hundreds of Beavers premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 29, 2022, and has been met with critical praise and numerous accolades. Multiple outlets have listed the film among the best films of the year. Cheslik and Tews self-distributed the film; the theatrical run grossed over $1 million. It received a video on demand release on April 15, 2024.

Beavers sneak into Jean Kayak's 19th-century apple orchard and eat the support beams of his two giant applejack kegs. Jean is too inebriated to notice one keg roll away. The second keg smashes into Jean's house and explodes, destroying the orchard and knocking out Jean. He awakens in winter, the ground covered in snow, and unsuccessfully tries to catch rabbits.^[a] He encounters a group of beavers collecting logs; delirious with hunger, he imagines them as food and attacks them but each time he is overpowered and beaten. Jean learns to catch fish by making his fingers bleed and using them as bait. When he sells the fish to a local merchant, he notices the Master Fur Trapper collecting a large sum of money for pelts.

Jean buys a knife and cuts his shirt and pants into rope, setting snares to catch rabbits. The rabbits prove elusive, however, and crafty raccoons raid his traps when they do catch rabbits. He catches a raccoon and meets an Indian Fur Trapper who trades him snowshoes for the knife. Jean takes the raccoon to the merchant's daughter, The Furrier,^[b] who makes him clothing from the pelt.

Jean breaks his leg when he falls into a pit made by the Master Fur Trapper, who rescues him and makes Jean his protégé. Wolves begin killing the Master Fur Trapper's dogs. The Master Fur Trapper fights the wolves when they attack in force, saves Jean – who had become drunk to calm his nerves – and gives Jean his trapping guide before being killed. Unable to make sense of the guide, Jean erases it and starts his own, remapping the area. He finds creative ways to trap animals, trading with the merchant and the Indian Fur Trapper for better gear. He and The Furrier develop a mutual attraction, but the merchant demands hundreds of beavers for her hand in marriage. In the meantime, the beavers are constructing a massive log structure, and a pair of beavers styled after Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson investigate Jean's traps.

Jean realizes that the wolves had taken the Master Fur Trapper's hoard of pelts into their den. The beavers, alerted by the Sherlock and Watson beavers, send a large force after Jean. He lures them into the wolf den and seals the entrance with icicles, allowing the wolves to slaughter them. Jean takes the bodies to the merchant's cabin, but is fooled by two-dimensional theatrical scenery created by Sherlock and Watson beavers, who take the bodies to be buried.

Jean sneaks into the beaver dam, where he discovers his remaining keg of applejack. Avoiding the temptation of drinking, he follows the beavers with the bodies but is caught by the beaver police. Found guilty at beaver trial, Jean is to be executed, skinned, and made into a coat. Realizing that he can slip out of snares by releasing tension, Jean escapes his restraints and overpowers the beavers. While making his way out, he notices the beavers have built a rocket ship from his applejack keg and accidentally causes its launch. The rocket goes off course, breaking the dam and causing a flood which creates Green Bay.

Jean interrupts the beaver funeral and rolls the bundle of beaver bodies into a snowball, which he rides toward the merchant's cabin. The beavers assemble into a giant figure which runs after him. The Indian Fur Trapper latches onto the rocket with a grappling arrow and directs it to the giant figure, which is broken apart. The snowball of hundreds of beaver pelts stops at the merchant's cabin, and Jean is allowed to marry the Furrier.

• Ryland Tews as Jean Kayak^[3]
• Olivia Graves as The Furrier^[3]
• Wes Tank as The Master Fur Trapper^[3]
• Doug Mancheski as The Merchant^[3]
• Luis Rico as The Indian Fur Trapper^[3]
• Eric West, Daniel Long, Jay Brown, and Mike Wesolowski as beavers^[5]

Filmmakers Mike Cheslik and Ryland Tews met at Whitefish Bay High School in Wisconsin and came to collaborate on film projects starting in 2008.^[6][7] The duo made Lake Michigan Monster (2018), a black-and-white film that cost $7,000.^[4][8] Cheslik and Tews formed the idea for Hundreds of Beavers while at a bar in Milwaukee in October 2018. Cheslik wrote, directed, edited, and created the visual effects for the film while Tews played the lead role.^[9] It was originally conceived as a parody of The Revenant (2015) and survival films.^[10] The script was a two-page treatment filled in with notecards and gag drawings.^[7] Cheslik likened Jean's character progression to Joseph Campbell's conception of the hero's journey, as Jean betters himself from an alcoholic struggling in the snow to a conquering champion.^[11]

The film was shot in black-and-white and had a budget of $150,000.^[9] Initial fundraising was sufficient to film the first act, which was shot over the course of three to four weeks. This footage was then shown to other investors, whose financing allowed the remainder of the film to be shot.^[12] It was filmed over the course of twelve weeks by a six-person crew using a Panasonic GH5, which filmed it in 1080p, in winter in 2019 and 2020.^{[9][4][12][13]} The crew stayed at a cabin in Manitowish Waters.^[14] Nine weeks of filming was done in Stephenson, Michigan, and the northern Wisconsin towns of Manitowish Waters, Pembine, and Superior.^[15][9]

The beaver suits were purchased online from a Chinese mascot website, with the teeth modified by the filmmakers.^[16] Eric West, Daniel Long, Jay Brown, and Mike Wesolowski wore the beaver costumes.^[5] Jon Truei was the fight choreographer.^[17] Over 1,500 visual effects were made using Adobe After Effects. Editing and post-production took two years to complete.^[9][4][13] Tews's father Wayne composed and performed songs for the film.^[14] Sound designer Bobb Barito used wooden objects including kazoos and clapper toys for the sounds in the film and used audio distortion for scenes including violence as he felt that "Violence sounds funniest when it's really distorted".^[13]

Inspiration was drawn from the Mario video games, America's Funniest Home Videos, and the slapstick comedy of Abbott and Costello, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and The Three Stooges.^[9] Ernst Lubitsch's The Wildcat (1921) also inspired the film. Tews based his movements in the film on Jackie Chan, while specific allusions to silent comedies include a scene that references Seven Chances (1925), in which Keaton is chased by a horde of angry women.^[6] The film's poster is similar to the poster for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)^[14][18] and was praised as one of the 50 best film posters of 2024 by IndieWire.^[19]

The second act of Hundreds of Beavers was designed to be like watching a let's play video. Cheslik stated that the audience "actually watch Ryland play the whole video game". Jean's progression and improvement in the film evokes systems used in role-playing video games. The merchant's shop was noted by GameSpot to operate like those in the The Legend of Zelda and how the video game features in the film were not used as a joke, but to convey information. Jean climbs trees in the same way that Mario on the Nintendo Entertainment System does. The sequence of Jean sneaking around the beaver dam was noted by GameSpot to be similar to the Ratchet & Clank and Oddworld series.^[11]

Hundreds of Beavers premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 29, 2022.^[20] It premiered in Canada at the 2023 Fantasia International Film Festival^[21] and in the United Kingdom at DukeFest on August 13.^[22] It was also shown at the Library of Congress on July 27, 2024,^[23] Quentin Tarantino's New Beverly Cinema for two weeks,^[24] and the Sitges Film Festival in Spain.^[25]

Cheslik and the producers chose to distribute the film themselves and Kurt Ravenwood oversaw the promotion campaign. They were aided by Jessica Rosner, a former executive at Kino International.^[20] Milwaukee-based ad agency SRH (named after Matt Sabljak, Ravenwood, and Sam Hogerton) spent $37,000 promoting the film.^[26][27] Hundreds of Beavers was shown at fourteen independent theaters in the Great Lakes region, including the Music Box Theatre in Chicago.^[20]

The filmmakers rejected distribution offers made after festival showings as those plans would only show the film in theaters for a week before sending it to video on demand.^[12] By November 2024, the film had been shown in no more than 33 theaters at once. An encore showing was conducted in around 70 theaters starting on December 5.^[28] A 35mm print of the film was shown on February 26, 2025, in Dallas, Texas.^[29]

Aerofilms premiered the film in the Czech Republic on May 9, 2024.^[30][31] Lightbulb Film Distribution distributed the film in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom beginning on July 9.^[32] Tews toured 40 cities in the United Kingdom over the course of four months. A German release, managed by Lightbulb and 24 Bilder, opened in 68 theaters on February 13, 2025.^[33] The streaming rights were sold to Cineverse.^[34] The film received a video on demand release on April 15, 2024.^[35] It was released on Blu-ray by Vinegar Syndrome on January 28, 2025,^[5] and has sold 10,000 copies as of March 2025.^[36] A special edition version for VHS is set for release.^[29]

Hundreds of Beavers grossed $720,911 in the United States and Canada, and $498,214 in other territories, for a worldwide total of $1,219,125.^[1] The showing at the Music Box Theatre grossed $8,000 in one day, the highest individual gross for any screening of the film.^[33] More than half of the film's box office gross was made after the film was released through video on demand.^[28] Its box office revenue surpassed $1 million after its release in Germany.^[33] In addition to the box office revenue, $500,000 was grossed on digital platforms and $250,000 worth of merchandise was sold.^[24]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of 106 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "Sustaining a zany premise with stylistic bravura and inspired gags, Hundreds of Beavers is a comedic gem that gives a dam."^[37] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, gave the film a score of 82 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".^[38]

Dennis Harvey, writing for Variety, praised the film's editing as it could "milk every gag without belaboring it," the soundtrack was "equal to the visual imagination on display," and that the "ingeniously home-made lark never runs out of steam."^[4] Peter Bradshaw, who gave the film 4 out of 5 stars in The Guardian, praised the "sheer sustained silliness" and the "film's absolute dedication to gag productivity".^[3] Nick Schager, writing for The Daily Beast, declared the film "a marvel of slapstick invention" and "an overstuffed live-action homage to the golden age of animation".^[39] It received an 8 out of 10 review from FilmInk.^[40]

Pete Volk, writing for Polygon, praised the film's visuals despite its small budget as it "nevertheless looks better than many modern blockbuster productions".^[41] Vulture awarded it Best Stunt in a Non-Action Film for the brawl in which Jean frees himself from his captors.^[17] Matt Zoller Seitz, who gave the film a perfect 4 stars in his RogerEbert.com review and later listed it as the fourth best film of the year, compared its low-budget filmmaking style to Eraserhead (1977), El Mariachi (1992), and the films of Wes Anderson.^[42][43] Nick De Semlyen, giving the film 4 out of 5 stars in Empire, compared the film's "wacky wavelength and pure energy" to the early work of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson.^[44] Daniel Scheinert praised the film, stating that it "is the key to making theatres fun, and is the future of cinema".^[45]

Hundreds of Beavers was listed among the top 10 of the top 50 films of 2024 on Letterboxd^[46] and the highest-rated comedy.^[47] For 2024, it was listed as the 42nd best film by The Guardian,^[48] 3rd best by The A.V. Club,^[49] and one of the ten best films by the Los Angeles Times^[50] and The Boston Globe.^[51] The editors of RogerEbert.com listed it as a runner-up for the ten best films of 2024^[52] and Slant Magazine listed it as a runner-up for the 25 best films.^[53] It placed 38th in IndieWire's poll of 177 critics.^[54] The Boston Globe also gave a special mention to Tews's performance for its critics' selection of the ten best performances of 2024.^[55] Film critic Alonso Duralde named Hundreds of Beavers as the best film of 2024.^[56] Rob Hunter listed Hundreds of Beavers as the 15th best film of the 2020s in a 2025 /Film article.^[57]

• Official website
• From Showshoes to Fish Puppets, VFX featurette on YouTube
• Hundreds of Beavers at IMDb