Rating: R | Runtime: 88 minutes
Release Date: April 12th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Bleecker Street Media
Director(s): David Zellner & Nathan Zellner
Writer(s): David Zellner

It’s absolutely insane that David and Nathan Zellner’s latest film Sasquatch Sunset is opening wide across the country today. This is an 88-minute familial drama starring a quartet of sasquatch who communicate only in grunts. There are no subtitles. There are no human beings (although this family does eventually see and engage with remnants of a human presence). Everything we need to know comes from the actors’ actions, expression, and emotions.

What is their day-to-day during this year-long look into their habitat? Eating, wanting sex, letting curiosity lead them into danger, and futile attempts to find others like them. They move like chimps to maintain a semblance of humanity, but they react like dogs—putting anything that smells like it might be food into their mouths, repeating something fun over and over until it stops being fun, and letting their libido get the best of them when anxious and our unintentionally provoked. They do, however, learn their lessons quick … if they survive the lesson to learn it.

Jesse Eisenberg (Dad), Riley Keough (Mom), Christophe Zajac-Denek (Son), and Nathan Zellner (Grandpa?) are in full prosthetics and make-up for the duration. All the dirt and mud they come into contact with sticks to their hair. They urinate and defecate to mark their territory and scare away predators. Their faces become covered with fish guts and berry juice before being replaced by vomit if one or the other doesn’t sit well in their stomachs. They move on impulse. They accept their place when chastised into remembering where that place is.

And that’s about it. I can’t really talk about anything specific since the cause and effect of their actions is the plot. All I will tease is that the seasons are changing along with Mom’s evolving pregnancy. So, a baby looms as the four find themselves caught by danger both from nature and of their own making. Add some environmental themes (forest fire, marked trees for cutting, campers leaving candy out to flood the ecosystem with sugar, etc.) to project some relevancy on the narrative beyond the experiment of letting these actors tap into their primal selves and there is surely enough for some to call it important.

Me? I say it’s a mildly entertaining exercise with excellent performances and even better make-up. The Zellners know enough not to milk the runtime (88-minutes is probably pushing it anyway) and do a great job not repeating themselves to pad it either. This family’s experiences escalate and their mortality is never ignored. It’s a sad story as a result. One steeped in the existential nightmare of realizing you’re at once all alone and not alone at all.

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Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg, and Christophe Zajac-Denek in Bleecker Street’s SASQUATCH SUNSET.