By: Trevor Chartrand

I recently covered 2023’s A Disturbance in the Force, the documentary about the Star Wars Holiday Special.  Now, if there’s anything to take away from that doc, it’s that bipedal apes grunting at each other for 90 minutes doesn’t exactly qualify as captivating entertainment.  It’s a lesson directors David and Nathan Zellner would have benefited from before making Sasquatch Sunset.

Granted, the Zellners (Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter) have done their best here to establish distinguishable personalities between four Sasquatch protagonists, and they even string a loose narrative together without a single word of spoken dialogue.  That’s a noteworthy achievement in itself, and it certainly makes this movie better than the Star Wars Holiday Special.  But not much better.

This film follows a family of four surprisingly horny Bigfoots (Bigfeet?), played by Jesse Eisenberg (Vivarium), Riley Keough (Zola), Christophe Zajac-Denek and even the director (Nathan Zellner) himself.  As these creatures of legend wander the woods, they encounter love, danger, hardship, and devastating loss.  We follow their journey over the course of a year, one season at a time, through a series of vignettes.

Sasquatch Sunset premiered at Sundance earlier this year and, allegedly, there were a lot of walk-outs during some of the film’s more graphic scenes.  I suspect that’s exactly the type of reaction the filmmaker’s were hoping for here.  There’s an absurd and self-aware tone to this picture that suggests to me that these filmmakers knew exactly what they were doing: the joke’s on the audience, especially during gratuitous sequences featuring Sasquatch scat and urine in surprisingly unhinged detail. 

If you can look beyond the nastier stuff though, you will find some merit to this movie.  To the film’s credit, it was beautifully shot in the woods of Humboldt County, California.  There’s some breathtaking scenery on display here.  And while the Sasquatch prosthetics are not perfect, they’re good enough that if you squint a little, you just might convince yourself you’re watching a nature documentary. 

The actors portraying Sasquatches are also quite strong, considering they don’t speak to each other.  It’s easy to determine each of their individual personalities based on grunts and body language.  Facial expressions alone are enough to convey emotion and present a story to the audience.  While it’s true that there’s not much happening in this film, the writers and cast have put in the work to tell their story in a concise and visual way.  In that sense, Sasquatch Sunset succeeds, although I’d only admit that with extreme resignation.

Perhaps some day, Sasquatch Sunset will be considered a cult classic, praised for its bizarre combination of gross-out humor with fleeting moments of poignancy.  A cult film usually goes viral by accident, but perhaps the creators of this film are aiming for manufactured cult success with their approach.  Whatever the case, the movie functions well enough, in its own odd way.  I wouldn’t call it good, and yet, I was thoroughly engaged throughout.

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Trevor Chartrand: @OhHaiTrebor