‘Sasquatch Sunset’ review: Dirs. David & Nathan Zellman [Berlinale]

Prepare yourselves for one of the weirdest, most unique films of the year, if not the decade, with Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough among the cast as members of a pack of sasquatches in the Zellman brothers’ new film playing in the Berlinale Special strand at this year’s festival.

Following a debut in Sundance, this wacky new feature – very different from David and Nathan Zellman’s 2018 Berlinale-premiering western, Damsel with Robert Pattinson, Sasquatch Sunset is, in fact, unique from every other film that we’ve seen during the lifetime of this website, at least.

The film opens in a forest, an expanse of trees as far as the eye can see – image and after image or perfectly captured vistas of the region. We eventually land upon the subject matter of the film, a family of sasquatches – a mother (Riley Keough), father (Nathan Zellman), and offspring (Jesse Eisenberg) and younger son (Christophe Zajac-Denek). It’s not long before we see the elders rutting in the woods, the other son watching on aimlessly. In fact, the film is full of toilet humour early on, with the four of them pissing, shitting etc. as you’d expect any wild animal to do. Though these as sasquatches, the largely unseen mythical Bigfoots living out of sight, engraved in American and Canadian folklore. How would they behave? The Zellmans spend their film examining this along with how they would interact with the world around them.

Nathan Zellman’s alpha is the dominant one, keen to keep the juicy hallucinogenic berries to himself and wander off into the woods as a hunter-gatherer – in between grabbing his other half and attempting to have sex with her – which seems to be constant. Keough’s female seems to be with child, recently expectant and spends most of her time keeping the other two in check, mostly the youngest who is still attached to the breast. Eisenberg’s older male is more sensitive, keen to tend to the local wildlife, gently holding a butterfly on his fingers, kissing a potentially deadly snake or eyeing up a massive, slog stranded in the river.

They come across humans, too, or at least their left belongings – a visit to a small camp a highlight of the film as the sasquatches discover music via an old ghetto blaster.

Sasquatch Sunset is one of those films where you have to just turn up and at least attempt to embrace what is put before you. There is no dialogue, just grunts and high-pitched calls as they bank on trees, and I’m sure this will have audiences either loving or hating it. I fell into the former camp, laughing during at least the first third, and often on the edge of my seat as the narrative plays out over four seasons, beginning with spring and ending with winter. It’s also touching and has a wonderful tone throughout. I think I felt every emotion as the ‘action’ played out, the feature having the feel of a nature documentary with hairy mythical creatures. It is wonderfully shot by Mike Gioulakis who was the cinematographer on the likes of Jordan Peele’s Us and It Follows, and there’s great musical accompaniment from The Octopus Project who also provided the soundtrack for Damsel and the Zellman’s previous feature Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter.

The only negative is that, despite the film having a sub-90-minute running time, the story feels stretched, but with the four very brilliant performances, excellent writing and directing, and the film’s wonderful nature, you’re willing to forgive the minor faults.

Sasquatch Sunset won’t be for all, but for those looking for something very different in a climate of repetitive movie output, you can’t go far wrong with this very funny, quirky, idiosyncratic cracker of a film.

Sasquatch Sunset was reviewed at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival.