Written by Andreas Babiolakis

Warning: blatant spoilers for Sasquatch Sunset are featured throughout this review. Topics of a disgusting nature are also brought forth. Reader discretion is advised.

No one goes into Sasquatch Sunset expecting a normal film, but many of the outcries are true. The latest film by brothers David and Nathan Zellner, Sasquatch Sunset, is a well-intentioned train wreck: a disastrously gross feature with something sincere to say but it’s next to impossible to hear it due to the sound of your own gagging. It’s as if someone wanted to tell you something important but a huge glob of snot is distractingly dangling from their nose and teetering on the crevice of their lip. You cannot hear what they have to say because of how hard you are fighting back the urge to vomit. My apologies for the crude image, but it had to be said in order to understand why Sasquatch Sunset is a mess. If you think snot is bad, avoid this feature at all costs because it goes so much further than nasal waste.  There isn’t much plot to go off of outside of how Sasquatch Sunset is reminiscent of, say, Disney’s Bambi and how the turns of the season reflect the cycle of life.

This time, however, you get everything from farting and awkward sex to — and I warn you not to keep reading if you are squeamish — the flinging of feces, urinating and projectile defecating on the floor, scratching unmentionable parts and smelling one’s fingers (and forcing others to smell them, too), and even a birth of a baby Sasquatch, umbilical cord and placenta and all (the cord and placenta are then used as a tool of sorts shortly afterward, just to go over the line). I’m not a prude or a goody-two-shoes. In fact, I consider myself desensitized. I’m not disturbed by what is going on here. I also desire purpose, and Sasquatch Sunset doesn’t have much. Whatever deeper meanings or unusually beautiful or heartbreaking moments occur are usually swiftly destroyed by the next sick image. I like it when absurdity and crassness serve a bigger concept, statement, or artistic intention. I couldn’t care less when the joke is that these sasquatches are nauseating to watch, because a film that is only eighty minutes now feels like a three-hour-long joke that just will not end. I’m familiar with the works of the Zellners, especially the highly creative Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (an invented elaboration of the joke that Fargo, by the Coen brothers, is based on a true story), so I knew who I was dealing with when watching Sasquatch Sunset. Nothing excuses how flatly this film peforms.

Three strikes and this film’s out; *Sasquatch Sunset* is a total misfire from filmmakers who are capable of absurdist cinema.

At first, I was questioning the validity of titling a film about Neanderthals Sasquatch Sunset until the egg was on my face. The film slowly reveals that these are indeed Sasquatches living in the present; we don’t see too much of human civilization, but we get enough hints to know how the habitat of these missing links — of sorts — and their habitat are threatened. While there is something profound here, it isn’t fully realized. If we’re meant to see how the evolution of humans have destroyed nature for all (including human-like species), then why do the Sasquatches prove to be capable of wiping themselves out (when “alpha male”, who I prefer to call Grandpa Squatch, gets sick and trips out after eating mushrooms, and attempts to fornicate a cougar and is killed in the process)? Unless this is a sign of the perversions of humans to come (which is foggy enough to not stick its landing), Sasquatches are clearly enough of a threat to themselves that the power of humans barely matters (also consider how we only ever see a handful of Sasquatches, and no more than four at a time, so they were clearly on their way out already).

The concept of these Sasquatches being removed from us also doesn’t work regarding the highly uncomfortable humour here. We are meant to identify with the juvenile, gross-out comedy that is the disgraceful way that these beings live, so the intention is already off (how can we identify with these beings if they’re meant to be removed from how we are). If that is the case, then what’s with the commentary on how humans ruin the habitats of others if these Sasquatches are — essentially — not that far removed from us? I get the concept that humans are their own worst enemy, but something like Attack on Titan conveys this message far more clearly — and in a multitude of ways — compared to Sasquatch Sunset, which squanders what it is trying to say by instead being as off-putting as possible. There’s a fairly important message here, but you’re not going to remember or even find it once you’re done with this episode of Hirsuted Neanderthalean Jackass.

The only beauty that remains stems from the score by the experimental band The Octopus Project (synth tracks that convey proper emotions and musical narration of what goes on in this dialogue-free endeavour) and the cinematography by Michael Gioulakis (which is frequently ruined by shots of Sasquatch testicles or bodily fluids of all colours and varieties). These help Sasquatch Sunset maintain some sort of dignity when it is otherwise a slog that doesn’t know what it is trying to say. The Sasquatch family grunts like the Wookies in the Star Wars Holiday Special (well, maybe not that annoyingly), and you never know what they’re fully feeling (despite some honest efforts by actors Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg, amongst others); this often feels like a high school acting exercise where everyone has to act like Big Foot for an indeterminate amount of time.

The commentary is displayed heavy-handedly in case we miss it amongst the insanity (objects and markings are usually bright colours, typically red, so we don’t miss it), and even then it is muddled by the prioritization of icky comedy. Its ending is the only part that rings true enough: a lasting image of the surviving Sasquatches stumbling upon a museum dedicated to their own kind, and tied together with a massive Sasquatch statue outside (who they try to communicate with). Humans will lead to their own demise, it is true, and we’re already accepting this despite those of us who remain and the time we have left to turn things around. After the many instances where I rolled my eyes or creased my brow in frustration, this meaningful moment doesn’t work as well as it could have, and then the credits roll as quickly as a baby Sasquatch is launched out of its mother. I don’t know what Sasquatch Sunset wants to accomplish, but, by the grace of God, all sunsets are quick and temporary, and I can get back to looking forward to something else once this one sets.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.