Sasquatch Sunset (2024), directed by David Zellner and Nathan Zellner, stars Jesse Eisenberg, Riley Keough, Christophe Zajac-Denek, and Nathan Zellner. The film follows a family of four Sasquatches as they try to survive the harsh realities of the untamed wilderness. Throughout their day-to-day lives, the family suffers hardships. However, this doesn’t come without its fair share of tender and silly moments that display the family’s love for one another. It’s essentially a year in the life story of the most mythologized creatures in US history.

The four sasquatches are tough to analyze in terms of acting. Their dialogue consists solely of different kinds of grunts and the actors themselves are unrecognizable under all the prosthetics. It’s a fully committed approach but sacrifices a huge amount of characterization for the individual squatches. We watch them go through various hardships and successes but never end up caring about them. Their often animalistic behavior ultimately undermines moments where the film tries to humanize them. For example, it’s tough to take these characters seriously when our first introduction to them is two of them having aggressive doggy-style sex as the other two stare in awe. 

The film’s tone often switches between crude, poop-related comedy and tender, life-affirming beauty. It features a daring combination of tones, but it ultimately didn’t work for me. It’s tough to buy into the film’s scenes of naturalistic beauty when they’re often followed by scenes, for example, where the sasquatches scratch their crotches and then smell their fingers. 

Although the film was only about 85 minutes, I found myself shifting in my seat after the first twenty minutes. It’s a slice-of-life movie, but not a life the viewer can recognize. Slice-of-life movies often work because the viewer can connect their real-life experiences to the ones in the film – which is not the case with Sasquatch Sunset. 

Regardless of my dislike for the film, it’s a movie that features a unique premise and commits fully to it – something that’s admirable in itself. It’s often appropriately stupid considering the characters but still retains an entertaining WTF factor that can either be hilarious or grating depending on the viewer. On top of all this, it features a fantastic score that gave me more goosebumps than anything that actual “story” has to offer. 

Overall, this is a unique experimental film that’s an unforgettable watch but lacks a large amount of traditional entertainment value. If you find this kind of toilet humor funny, you’ll probably have a great time. I didn’t love it, but it’s also a hard movie to knock. I needed a lot more focus on things besides how these creatures eat and reproduce, but that’s just my humble opinion, man. C+