'Sasquatch Sunset' is a Valiant (But Failed) Attempt at a 90-Minute Sight Gag
Did you know there is not a single line of dialogue or non-sasquatch character in 'Sasquatch Sunset'? Reader, I did not.
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A lot of times when I go see movies, I don’t watch a trailer first. Certainly I’m exposed to plenty, but I don’t seek them out. Having covered movies for the better part of 15 or 20 years now, my attitude used to be, I’m going to see it anyway, why prejudice myself having to compare it to the marketing? It’s also much easier to be pleasantly surprised that way, and countless festival movies have been improved by me seeing them completely cold. And so I’ve mostly figured, if a movie involves people I’m interested in, I’ll go see it. No further research required.
Suffice it to say, I am rethinking this policy after seeing Sasquatch Sunset.
I knew it had Riley Keough (easily my favorite nepo baby, absolutely unforgettable in American Honey and Under the Silver Lake), Jesse Eisenberg (certainly an actor) and some directors whose movies I’d always meant to catch at Sundance (the Zellner Brothers). Plus a funny title: “Sasquatch Sunset.” That just sounds like a premise worth a few bucks.
Some crucial information I had somehow missed: Sasquatch Sunset has zero non-sasquatch characters and not a single line of human dialogue.
If that sounds like a bold pitch, it is. It’s hard not to respect the decision to put recognizable not-quite-stars like Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg in sasquatch costumes and make them grunt like apes and pretend to shit on the ground for 90 minutes. I truly didn’t know it was even Keough and Eisenberg in there until the credits rolled. And yet, it’s also one of those concepts that’s funnier as a prank than it is as a movie.
The practical joke aspect of Sasquatch Sunset wears off after about a scene — the first one, the movie’s best, featuring two sasquatches screwing doggystyle, which also turns out to have been in the trailer. They probably shouldn’t have opened with the best bit; it’s mostly all downhill from there. The costumes are pretty great too, at least at first. They all look like big, bearded apes, with sad, sunken eyes and goat beards, the men with skinny, straw-like dicks that flop around and jiggle like noodles when they’re not getting stiff little boners. Kudos to the Zellner brothers for realizing the comedic potential of pencil dicks.
Once the magic of the concept wears off however, Sasquatch Sunset needs to either have some more jokes or lead into a compelling story, neither of which it does. The other great joke of the film is that trying to describe it in a review makes me sound like an insane person, which is admittedly a pretty good bit. Acknowledging that, here goes.
One problem is that it took me a good 35 minutes of screen time to be able to figure out which sasquatches were which, and that there were only four of them. In the first scene, two of them screw like dogs while the other two watch. Once they’re finished, the two screwing ones go and wipe off the sasquatch cum and squirt on fern leaves. Again, classic bit.