By Nick Venable | 7 years ago

The Academy Awards are airing Sunday night, and sci-fi is making a fine showing with both Her and Gravity getting a slew of nominations in a variety of categories. And while all of the nominees are locked down and can’t be changed — except when it’s found out that financial lobbying went into it, as was the case with a Best Song nominee — producers Armory Films and BenderSpink are running an extremely early “For Your Consideration” campaign to get the upcoming horror comedy Zombeavers on the minds of 2015’s Oscar voters. Not as many “death by tail paddling” threats as I would have liked, but these posters are spectacular.

Obviously these are just spoof posters, but that doesn’t mean they’re not top quality in terms of cleverness and execution. As if seeing Joaquin Phoenix’s mustached mug wasn’t always frightening every time a Her poster popped up, but now we have a much more horrific tuft of facial hair to make our OS-obsessed brains go batty. Or beavery, as it were. The posters convey the same self-aware deprecation that comes with making a film about mutated beavers made murderous from toxic waste. It’s not your usual Oscar bait, no doubt, but these blurbs are sure to sell anyone who’s riding the fence about this film’s intentions.

After all, who can miss a film that “might be aiiight,” according to world star hip hop, or a film whose gaffer wants this film taken off of his resume. This is must-see shit, folks, made better by a trailer that actually looks like it’ll pull off its central gimmick with toothy aplomb.

Check out the poster poking fun at Gravity below, and tell me this guy wouldn’t have been a much more lovely and capable star than Sandra Bullock. I mean, that might be Bullock’s blood helping him along, but still.

If director Jordan Rubin’s mom thinks it has too much nudity and cursing, then I’m there. I don’t understand why no one let out entire monologues of foul language once shit went wrong in Gravity. Hopefully Zombeavers will more than make up for it.

And now we have the American Hustle-themed poster, where the sunglasses definitely make the man.

Starring a group of up-and-coming young actors, plus comedian Bill Burr and CSI: Miami‘s Rex Linn, Zombeavers will pick apart its audiences one by one when it dams itself into theaters and film festivals later this year. Missed the trailer? Don’t make that mistake again and watch it below.