Do you think Sasquatches snore? Come on, deep down you know the answer. Of course they do. They snort, eat noisily, and pluck insects from their fur, then eat those insects noisily.
What else do Sasquatches do, you wonder? One of the wildest films of the year—or century, for that matter—has them grieving, cuddling, burying their dead, enjoying throwing rocks into rivers, making art, and wondering if they alone in the world.
Even so, Sasquatch Sunset , from director brothers David and Nathan Zellner, is a confusing 90-minute storyless, wordless experiment that’s as daring as it is infuriating. It’s not clear if everyone was freaked out while doing it, or if we should be while watching it.
Nathan Zellner, Jesse Eisenberg, Riley Keough and Christoph Zajac-Deneck play a makeshift family of four Sasquatch, lost in hair suits and prosthetics and communicating only with grunts, snorts and howls. They also pee a lot.
Why the makers of the film hired such star actors instead of paying scale to some unknowns is puzzling. None of the Sasquatches do more than what might be called the Method Chimpanzee—jumping up and down, yelling, and growling. A group of real chimpanzees would kill the quartet for overdoing it.
As an exercise in creating empathy for monsters, “Sasquatch Sunset” does an admirable job. In the opening shots, when we see a Bigfoot leaping into the middle distance—and then three more—it’s clear that they’re telling this story, not the people who usually capture them in shaky camera frames.
There are many moments where Sasquatches are just like us, such as when one brings flowers to seduce another or two Bigfoot comfort each other after death. Perhaps the most moving moments are when they hit trees with sticks in unison, a rhythmic question that echoes through the valley. This is a call waiting for an answer – is there anyone like us?
But then there’s a lot of rough stuff. We mentioned peeing, but it turns out that sasquatches sneeze, give birth noisily, and like to touch their genitalia and then smell their fingers. They can also poop on demand and throw this poop around to scare away predators.
A juvenile Bigfoot makes his arm a makeshift puppet and talks to it — a nod to the kid in “The Shining” — and another contemplates sticking his manhood into a small hole in a tree, a prehistoric riff on that famous scene in “American Pie.”
Both things can be true, of course: Bigfoot can be hideous and profound at the same time. But it’s not always clear what the filmmakers are looking for here – satire, metaphor, sympathy, naturalism or sick comedy?
Sasquatches reveal deeply human characteristics and may be stand-ins for our innocent past, a lost link in our evolution, showing the relentless violence of natural life, or simply the voiceless among us now. Or the filmmakers might just like the poop-throwing image.
The gorgeous vistas of pristine forests and misty valleys don’t help us understand when it’s all happening, but gradually clues emerge, including evidence of logging and a truly surreal bit of human camping, punctuated by Erasure’s ‘Love to Hate You’ .” But if the Zellners had an environmental lesson here, they ignored it.
There’s great music from The Octopus Project, going from bright electric guitar noodles to sci-fi electronic horror reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Check out the end credits list and see one of the best credits in the movie: Sasquatch Wrangler. You don’t see that every day. You don’t see Sasquatch movies every day either, but this is one you should probably let pass you by.
“Sasquatch Sunset,” a Bleecker Street release that opens in select theaters on April 12 and in wider distribution on April 19, is rated R for “some sexual content, full nudity and gory imagery.” Duration: 89 minutes. One star out of four.
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MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian.
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Online: https://bleeckerstreetmedia.com/sasquatch-sunset
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Mark Kennedy is on http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits
