Sasquatch Sunset
Directed by David Zellner & Nathan Zellner
Written by David Zellner
Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Riley Keough, Christophe Zajac-Denek, Nathan Zellner
Running Time: 1 hour and 29 minutes
Rated R for sexual content, full nudity, and bloody images
In theaters April 19

by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer

On paper, Sasquatch Sunset sounds instantly compelling. The film is essentially a family drama by way of a National Geographic nature documentary centered around four Sasquatch living in the woods of Northern California. The Sasquatch suits are great, the cast is outstanding, and the cinematography is simply stunning. The big issue here is that the brothers Zellner came up with a great idea and didn't bother to craft a compelling narrative. The result is a film that feels like a 10-minute short that has been stretched to the absolute limits of what cinema can tolerate.

This isn't the first Sasquatch themed movie on David Zellner's resume. He directed a 5-minute short called Sasquatch Birth Journal 2 in 2010 so it's obvious Bigfoot is near and dear to his heart. Where Sasquatch Birth Journal 2 is simply 5 uncut minutes of a Sasquatch pushing a baby out of its birth canal, Sasquatch Sunset has a little more meat on its bones. It chronicles the year in the life of a small Sasquatch tribe, and the trials and tribulations therein. There's birth and death, fear and joy, and though the Sasquatch are squarely in the middle of the human nature/animal nature Venn diagram, each of the four has their own personality that develops over the course of the movie.

This has to do with the amount of care the actors put into these roles. Even covered with full-body Sasquatch suits, the actors manage to convey the personalities of their particular Sasquatch. The problem is that these personalities exist in a vacuum because not a lot happens. The general structure alternates between tender moments in Sasquatch World and acts of sex and/or violence that range from comic to gross to horrific. This pattern is tedious and given that it's the only thing that gives this story-less movie any momentum, it can be exhausting. There are real moments of beauty here, as when Jesse Eisenberg's Sasquatch looks at the stars or tries to count, seemingly trying to push through his animal nature to a hidden humanity within. And then the next scene will be the Sasquatch group finding a road, freaking out at the novelty of a road, and promptly urinating and defecating upon it in borderline ritualistic fashion. And then you'll have a scene where the lone female squatch gives birth and tenderly holds her baby and breastfeeds it. But that contrasts with a scene earlier where a squatch forcibly suckles on the female squatch’s breasts.  This movie has no idea what it is, or what it wants to be, and it's fine with that. That may be fine for the directors, but for an audience, this is tough sledding.

Sasquatch Sunset is so tonally all over the place that the whole thing just feels silly. While I admire that there is no spoken human language in the film--the Sasquatches communicate with a series of gutteral grunts and occasional shrieks--the whole movie feels like an elaborate prank designed to punk the audience. I know that isn't the intent of this movie--at least I'm pretty sure--but after the whole pooping and peeing on the road sequence I lost all faith that this this thing was going to reach some sort of satisfying conclusion or have anything to say beyond "isn't nature beautiful and terrible." One can imagine some interesting avenues the filmmakers could have taken to make a more compelling feature, and it's frustrating because there are a lot of things this movie does well.

Even though the movie doesn't work, the fact that it is so lovingly made keeps it from being a total waste of time. The Sasquatch suits, for one, are impeccable. You can't recognize the characters at all, and my favorite thing about the movie was learning to identify the characters by their individual subtleties. Christophe Zajac-Denek (Twin Peaks: The Return) surprisingly outshines the better-known actors by virtue of having these deeply sympathetic eyes. You can't tell if his diminutive squatch is a juvenile, or just smaller than the others, and it doesn't matter because the work is so strong. It's a bright spot in a heartbreakingly dull movie. Sasquatch Sunset is the sort of a movie you see on Netflix, remember how you heard about it when it came out, throw it on for 10 minutes, and then say, "Welp, glad I didn't pay to see that one in the theater." It has its moments, for sure, but not enough of them to even justify this movie’s brisk runtime.