Sasquatch Sunset

Sasquatch Sunset

© Sasquatch Sunset

VERDICT: Featuring wordless performances by a heavily disguised Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough, this boldly surreal Bigfoot comedy from David and Nathan Zellner has surprising emotional depth.

Starting with an audaciously silly premise, then treating it with admirably serious dramatic intent, Sasquatch Sunset is one of the most joyously bizarre outliers to screen at the Berlinale this year.

Directed by the fraternal indie film-making duo David and Nathan Zellner, this tragicomic creature feature closely observes a small tribe of hairy, ape-like Bigfoots living in a remote, densely wooded part of North America. Adding an extra layer of surreal humour, two of the four main sasquatches are played by Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough, renowned actors who sportingly rose to the challenge of spending an entire film in heavy prosthetics and costumes, with zero human dialogue, only grunts and yelps and shrieks. Co-director Nathan Zellner also does double duty as one of the sasquatches, a sexually aggressive alpha-male whose reckless machismo leads him into deep trouble, while art-house horror maestro Ari Aster has an executive producer credit.

The impressively detailed creature designs in Sasquatch Sunset are modelled on the infamous “Patterson-Gimlin” footage, a shaky clip of a mysterious a furry monster striding through Northern California woodland in 1967, a key foundation stone in Bigfoot mythology and the sole filmed evidence of this mythical beast. In truth, we have to take it on trust that we really are watching Eisenberg and Keough inside these costumes, and the stars are not just playing along with an outlandish hoax. If that is not them on screen, the joke is on us, but it’s still a pretty good joke. We might call this the Eisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Following its well-received world premiere in Sundance, Sasquatch Sunset makes its European debut in Berlin this week, with a further festival stopover at SWSX in March ahead of US theatrical release in April.

With their previous features Kid-Thing (2012), Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (2014), and Damsel (2018), the Zellners have already established a defiantly offbeat, genre-twisting voice. But Sasquatch Sunset, which builds on a short film the brothers made in 2011, takes their WTF vision to bold new heights. Across four seasons, the film’s lonely sasquatch tribe travel vast distances without encountering others of their species, share dangerous interactions with other wild animals, get drunk and stoned on forest fruits, sleep and fight and have sex.

Initially the date and setting are purposely vague: this could all be taking place centuries ago, or yesterday, or even in some post-apocalyptic future. As small clues from the human world slowly creep into the story, the background context comes a little clearer, but questions remain. Are we witnessing the aftermath of some extinction-level eco-disaster? Has humankind perished? Are these fabulous furry freaks the last of their kind?

Sasquatch Sunset will not suit all tastes. Some reviews have complained it feels like a juvenile gross-out comedy skit stretched too thinly, particularly as urination, defecation, and nudity are recurring motifs. The Zellners certainly push body-focussed slapstick humour to the max, but there is also pathos and tenderness here, with a semi-serious tone closer to Planet of the Apes (1968) than Bigfoot and the Hendersons (1987).

Performances are expressive and committed, even under heavy make-up, while poignant scenes of death and bereavement are played straight, daring human viewers not to empathise with our simian cousins on screen. Winking homages to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), gorgeous landscape photography by Michael Gioulakis, high-calibre production design credits and a haunting score by Texas experimental rock trio The Octopus Project, serial collaborators with the Zellners, all suggest a level of artistic ambition far above lowbrow toilet jokes. This bizarre creature feature may be a novelty stunt on some level, but it is brilliantly sustained stunt, with a surprisingly rich emotional range.

Directors: David Zellner, Nathan Zellner
Screenplay: David Zellner
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Riley Keough, Christophe Zajac-Denek, Nathan Zellner
Cinematography: Michael Gioulakis
Editing: Nathan Zellner, David Zellner, Daniel Tarr
Production designer: Michael Powsner
Costume designer: Steve Newburn
Music: The Octopus Project
Producers: George Rush, Lars Knudsen, Tyler Campellone, David Zellner, Nathan Zellner
Executive Producer: Ari Aster
Production companies: ZBI (US), Square Peg (US), The Space Program (US)
World sales: Protagonist, London
Venue: Berlinale (Special)
No language
88 minutes