At the end of this movie’s press screenings, it was honestly impossible to form a clear opinion about it. A few days after, the feelings and ideas about Sasquatch Sunset are still mixed. It is in fact quite difficult to fully embrace the work of David & Nathan Zellner due to its many issues, but at the same time seems equally important to endorse something which wants to challenge the viewer, use this medium in order to push the audience out of their comfort zone and force them to think about what they’ve just seen. 

The non-story follows a “family” of four missing links navigating the perils and wonders of an uncontaminated nature: the basic everyday life of the Sasquatch group – feeding, sleeping, building shelter for the night, pairing etc. – little by little becomes something weird but non completely unfamiliar, especially when the group starts being divided by instincts that express the greed of the single individual. 

David & Nathan Zellner from the very first scenes look pretty uncertain about which tone must be developed by their movie. Is Sasquatch Sunset a family drama? A comedy of horrors? An elegy with a social commentary? Probably all of these things, but unfortunately none of them at the same time. The directors themselves are eager to show that they have no intention to take themselves too seriously, but then you can clearly see some scenes referring to 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Shining by Stanley Kubrick, definitely a too “high” suggestion for Sasquatch Sunset.

©Courtesy of Bleecker Street Media

Watching this movie you can experience a rollercoaster of tones, styles, rhythms in the storytelling that leave you pretty insecure about what it truly wants to convey to you as a viewer. What actually elevates the level of the story and the depth of the characters is the surprising performance delivered by Riley Keough, absolutely capable of expressing the inner life of the only female member of the group with just a melancholic gaze of her blue eyes. The other star of Sasquatch Sunset, the Academy Award nominated Jesse Eisenberg, doesn’t really show that there’s such an actor behind the mask. 

In the end, Sasquatch Sunset looks like an artsy divertissement which can be perceived as quite entertaining in a funny way or slightly irritating, it really depends on the audience’s will to accept the (few and confused) rules that David and Nathan Zellner set. Why then to spend the price of the ticket in order to spend ninety minutes without a word spoken and with a lot – way too much – bucolic music underlining the Sasquatches’ journey?

Because at least it is something that dares to be original, that, like or not, won’t easily disappear from the memory of the viewers like too much contemporary American cinema unfortunately does. It is definitely not a coincidence if among the executive producers there is Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar, Beau Is Afraid), a filmmaker who is trying to find his own voices through an experimental take on genre movies. And this is what Sasquatch Sunset tries to do, perhaps failing to deliver a coherent narrative and vision but nonetheless willing to escape the coordinates of the obvious. And that, today more than ever, is a quality worth of total endorsement.

Grade: C-

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Here’s the trailer of the film.