“Sasquatch Sunset” Review
Do I even need to say anything else? I think this image from “Sasquatch Sunset” of a Bigfoot sniffing a skunk pretty much sums it up.
As much as I love comedy that is built upon well-structured jokes, funny dialogue and the sheer ridiculousness that comes attached with the human condition, I love comedy films of the silent era. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, all of these guys understood the basic visual elements of comedy and perfected it in a style that operated on big expressions, phenomenal stunts and ordinary situations expanded into a ridiculous scenario. It’s through this lens that the Zellner Brothers’ “Sasquatch Sunset” worked for me because, while it isn’t a silent film, there is not one spoken word in this entire film. It’s an entirely visual experience of ridiculous proportions that is both funny and surprisingly poignant.
Set in the California wilderness, the film follows a family of sasquatch, composed of an Alpha (Nathan Zellner), a Male (Jesse Eisenberg), a Female (Riley Keough) and her Child (Christophe Zajac-Denek), as they navigate a year in their habitat, foraging for food, looking for livable land and dealing with the impending deforestation that humanity offers. With the unforgiving environment pressing down on them, survival for this family is anything but easy.
Directed by Nathan and David Zellner (the latter also wrote the film), “Sasquatch Sunset” has a remarkable idea that is perfectly executed visually. There are no humans in this story and no narrator to explain what’s going on. The only way we can understand what’s happening is in the way that the sasquatch communicate with each other. Eventually, you grow to understand just how this unit works and you become really attached to this family, especially the Female and the Child. A significant portion of this magic falls to the talented actors who manage to work great emotion through all the make-up and prosthetics but it’s also an excellent achievement in writing and direction with this visual story feeling carefully crafted.
While the film is meant to be a surreal comedy, there is this underlying harsh tone that is fitting for the world they live in. This isn’t some kind of cute comedy that’s going to do nothing but make you feel cuddly. This is more like “Bambi” pushed even further where there are plenty of whimsical moments of nature but there’s also the feeling that any of these characters could fall victim to their environment.
With that said, this film is so fucking weird. I know that the synopsis I gave didn’t make this film seem like your typical family romp but this is a pretty out there film. So, if a surreal comedy with a team of Bigfoots sounds like your cup of tea, you’ll probably enjoy this film. Part of the comedy just comes from the image of seeing these creatures just staring at each other. I just can’t believe that so much money went into this. I’m grateful, but I can’t believe it.
There were sequences that had me in stitches because of how far the Zellner brothers were pushing the envelope with what they were doing. So, if you’re too straight-laced for this one, fair enough. But if you love seeing weird shit be weird shit, “Sasquatch Sunset” is a much better alternative to “normal cinema”. This feels like the kind of stuff that John Waters, Terry Gilliam and Guillermo del Toro would come up with if they went into the woods and smoked a massive bowl.
What I also appreciated about “Sasquatch Sunset” was how, behind the story of survival, there’s a subtle look at how humans are impacting their lives. Even though you never see one human in the whole film, we see this family all deal with the impact our species has had on them. They encounter a road, the effects of logging and some other locations that I dare not spoil. All I can say is that watching this film was a bizarre experience that I won’t forget for some time, there are some scenes that made damn sure of that.
