SASQUATCH SUNSET– 2 STARS

Let’s just go right to it just like Sasquatch Sunset does. How do other animals reproduce? That’s a giggling taboo question everyone’s had at one time or another in their lives. Maybe it took watching the striking footage of a nature documentary with sober narration and a dropped jaw. Maybe it came to mind during an inquisitive stroll through a zoo. Maybe it was a fantastic epiphany while buzzing on your illicit or controlled substance of choice. No matter, we’ve all had the wonder.

LESSON #1: WELL, HOW DO YOU THINK IT HAPPENS AND WHAT ARE YOU REALLY ASKING?-- The answer is clinically simple. Ejaculate from the male member makes it into vagina of a female in hopes of fertilizing an egg during an ideal time. You know your birds and bees, but you don’t really want to know how animals like turtles, rhinoceroses (thank you, Booty Call), or squid reproduce. You want to know the… ahem… activity that gets animals to that point. You want to know how they fuck. Don’t deny it. You want the brown-chicken-brown-cow version of that curiosity.

In the not-so-delicate case of the sasquatches of Sasquatch Sunset, you’ve got an animal alarmingly similar to us humans and, for movie purposes, played by humans under makeup and costumes. That means the graphic answer to Lesson #1 matches your imagination and is grandly presented for our viewing enjoyment in the very first scene of the film. Let’s continue to paint this picture, blushing be damned. 

Do you have a sound-making hand gesture for desiring sex? No? OK, fair enough. Way to be civilized! Try this then. Ever fuck so loud with gutternal noises that nearby deer and elk take notice? We’re talking louder than Kelly Preston in Jerry Maguire. No?! Well, now you have an initial idea to answer the big question and can fan yourself off from all this talk of coitus. Moreover, you can gauge how close you are to being a sasquatch or vice versa. Nevertheless, talk about a tone setter for a movie.

Written and directed by the indie favorite Zellner brothers of The Curse and Damsel, Sasquatch Sunset follows a year in the life of a family unit of bigfoots living in the deep forests of California’s Humboldt County. The pack has two adult males (Co-director Nathan Zellner and The Social Network Academy Award nominee Jesse Eisenberg), an adult female (Mad Max: Fury Road’s Riley Keough), and a juvenile male (Christophe Zajac-Denek of Twin Peaks: The Return). They keep a nomadic life sauntering the undergrowth, foraging for food, and building makeshift camps if they stay around an area for a while. Sure enough, those opening carnal urges– including the smells and tastes connecting to them– come and go like the weather and the film’s chaptered seasons.

LESSON #2: GIVE ANIMALS CREDIT FOR INTELLIGENCE AND FEELINGS– Before long, viewers of Sasquatch Sunset will probably grab onto the sentiment of “Hey, they’re just like us only hairier and cruder!” Similar to their– and our– primate brethren, the sasquatches show little signs of budding intelligence and familial love swelled slightly by the electronically-centered score by The Octopus Project (Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter). Rudimentary counting is attempted. They will groom each other’s thick coats and breastfeed for sustenance. Our clan even offers a few rituals, like burying the dead and banging on trees in orchestrational unison to signal for others of their own kind in vain. Not all of that is instinctual behavior. Plenty is learned not far away from us. 

This type of voyeuristic observation akin to documentary-style filmmaking is the tangible approach taken by David and Nathan Zellner. Shooting strictly on location, dynamic cinematographer Mike Gioulakis (Us, Old) and supervising sound editor Jack Sobo (Magdelena) soaked in the ambiance of the towering flora and its rugged perils, giving the movie genuine texture and scope with each establishing shot. For the mythical characters themselves, the makeup blending and creature suit designs of prosthetic specialist Steve Newburn (Dream Scenario) are phenomenal. His craftsmanship allowed the actors emotive range under all that hair and a camouflage to blend even deeper into the aesthetic with their performances.

It’s not that the movie or the actors don’t look the part in Sasquatch Sunset. That’s not the issue. It’s more about the purposes and examinations at hand. This film, which enjoyed praise during its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival earlier in the year, is one hell of a bizarre enigma poking and prodding any number of desires and intentions. 

Trying something this wild and experimental counts as a performance challenge for the committed actors, especially Riley Keough wringing every drop of emotion from her dirty mane. Thanks to the lovely cinematography, Sasquatch Sunset could levy a conservationist’s slant and a grand appreciation for the circle of life. Those would be excellent heights for a heady film if any of them were fully formed. Instead, any potency for something tangible is lost to a smorgasbord of sexual and scatalogical humor.

Even so, the laughs are few and far between and stay in the cringe territory. In the end, that’s all Sasquatch Sunset culminates to be with its farcical “wouldn’t it be wild if” episodes of delirious reasons to bone and extreme ways to make a mess. Pressing any lofty flights of fancy or journeys of love and loss next to primal chicanery does not mesh effectively. This is a wavelength of odd humor for only certain types of cinephiles. Have at it if that’s what blows your hair back.