Deep in the North American wilderness lives a family of Sasquatch; the alpha male (Nathan Zellner), the beta male (Jesse Eisenberg), his mate (Riley Keough), and their child (Christophe Zajac-Denek).  As the seasons pass and humanity encroaches closer to their habitat, the Sasquatch do what they can to survive as the world they knew and once ruled rapidly changes. 

David and Nathan Zellner direct Sasquatch Sunset, written by David Zellner for release by Bleecker Street Media after its debut at the Sundance Film Festival.  Without any spoken word, only grunts and groans along with a score from The Octopus Project, the film feels a little long at its paradoxically brief 88 minutes.  Mike Gioulakis lenses the film and it was assembled by Daniel Tarr in conjunction with the Zellners.  The result is a nature documentary that, as soon as one divorces themselves from the need for narration from a stately British actor, opens up to be a drama as tragic and harrowing as any piece delving into the human condition. 

For such a colorful film and with a premise that feels almost juvenile, Sasquatch Sunset is far from the Disney Nature series which it is emulating and wears its R rating with pride.  It is not particularly gory or scary, but there is definitively upsetting imagery across its runtime culminating into a bit of a thematic tragedy that would be difficult for younger audiences to process.  For older audiences, there is still a barrier to entry, ironically, in that the film largely rejects a formal structure, so it is best to let the narrative just wash over you, as a child tends to consume media, instead of actively trying to keep up with what is happening.  In the back half, the film does take on some more traditional structure, but the first act meanders its way through the woods, showing us vignettes connected by character and location but doing little to build off of each other or give us a reading on where we are headed. 

When the Zellners do begin to shift gears from having the film operate as a passive hang to something with a bit more meat on its bones, it becomes incredibly enjoyable.  It never fully shakes the feeling that we are watching some kind of actor’s workshop, but it does begin to feel more intentional.  One prime example is early on the family of four beats against the trees in a specific pattern and at first, we think it is a kind of play, but we begin to realize that it is a way of communicating with other families of Sasquatches.  After the Alpha male is mauled by a mountain lion, the remaining family bury him and adorn the grave site helping to link these creatures to the film’s human audience and the tactic is quite effective because up until this point, it is very easy for the mind to stray from what is being shown even in the best conditions.  The family returns to the grove to bang the branches against the trees once more and the gravity of the situation slowly begins to set in that these are the last remaining of their kind.  They are calling out into the nothingness looking for answers, desperate for a response that will never come.

Hope is not lost, however, as the mother is pregnant with a child, but the father will not live to see his youngest son be born.  It is a really tragic scene on the banks of the river, pulling from cinematic history with a red X spray painted onto a giant log that pins the father underneath the current reminiscent of the shadowy X that would spell doom for the characters in Howard Hawks’ Scarface (1932).  From there, the tragedy keeps on coming and the film ultimately climaxes in a poignant and affecting moment. It sneaks up on us, and in its insistence on simplicity, it becomes so much more powerful.  We understand now that a narrator, or even subtitles, would diminish the experience.

Sasquatch Sunset is one of those unassuming films made by people who love the craft and love the process.  Thematically, it is very different, but as a viewing experience, it will fill audiences who also love the craft and love the process with a similar sense of glee from watching something campy and bold like Dave McCary’s Brigsby Bear (2017).  It forges a sense of community and solidarity even with the barrier of the screen because it speaks to us on a very human level.  The film leans in to our personal fear of being alone and our species-shared fear that maybe we are it. Maybe there is nothing outside of the universe. But if that is the case, then it makes the state of our world so much scarier. There is no other place to turn. We are the stewards of our own environment, our home, and the home of all the other creatures.  Our advancements do not make us superior, they open us up to higher responsibility, a responsibility we unfortunately have been shying away from and our world, the natural world around us, is crumbling, scared, and crying out for help.