Sasquatch Sunset is a hilarious tragicomedy unlike any you’ve ever seen before.
The film follows a troop of four sasquatches over the course of a year as they frolic, feast and fear for their lives.
Simplicity is the film’s strong suit as its able to create hilarious and often heart-wrenching scenes, earning the film a strong four out of five stars.
This rating comes with a warning: there is no greater plot, there is no greater goal.
In fact, excluding song lyrics towards the end of the film, there is no dialogue whatsoever. Not even narration.
“We always wanted it to be from the perspective of the sasquatch,” the film’s co-director and one of its stars, Nathan Zellner said.
Zellner adds, “And I think a big part of that is making sure that the audience is on their side and takes them as real,” he continued, “Immersing the audience in this environment with just the dialogue that they communicate to each other, which is a series of grunts and whoops.
But it’s really clear what they’re saying to each other, even though there’s no English language. There’s no subtitles.”
Despite the limitations, there is a very real intimacy built. Audiences see just how loving and vulnerable the sasquatch family can be.
Under heavy makeup and fur, the four leads give outstanding performances from portraying the nuances of pensiveness to the ridiculousness of primate-induced mania.
“We had a sasquatch boot camp where we all learned how to move and how to talk,” academy award nominee, Jesse Eisenberg stated, “We had one of the great Marcel Marceau [French actor and mime] teachers with us. We had this amazing mime who studied in France for 20 years and now he’s teaching us how to eat lettuce and salmon without it getting into our beards.”
He also pointed out that the sasquatch transformation was excruciating, the process lasting an hour and 45 minutes just for the face.
Steve Newburn’s creature suits and designs might be the weakest part of the film, having paid too little attention to the sasquatches’ torsos and having drawn a little too much inspiration from the Harry and the Hendersons creature design as he would admit.
Considering there’s not too many ways to depict a sasquatch and the film’s often alluded to, never specified, modest indie budget, the final product is nothing to sell short.
The northern California woods where Sasquatch Sunset was filmed is another standout with lush, vibrant greenery and cool, rushing rivers.
The score by The Octopus Project perfectly highlights this majesty. There are tracks that ooze solemnity, tracks that urge playfulness and tracks to make one breath deep, awe-struck.
“I believe in its cultural relevance in terms of what it represents as our connection to the natural world,” David Zellner the co-director and screenwriter said of his own belief in the sasquatch myth, “As civilization developed, it feels like we’ve become more and more disconnected from that, and so that might be part of what the origins of the stories come from. But I think regardless, it’s relevant for that reason.”
Sasquatch Sunset is in theaters now and although it isn’t going to be for everyone, it’s a must watch for anyone intrigued and unintimidated by unique and ambitious storytelling.
