Sasquatch Sunset

Grade: C+

Sasquatch Sunset does not pass the late Gene Siskel’s ongoing question: “Is this movie better than a hypothetical documentary of these actors and crew having lunch?” Here, definitely not – in fact it could have been just a part of a larger movie about a couple of big stars who think “wouldn’t it be hysterical if we put on Sasquatch outfits and shot an hour and a half lineless movie?” I would love to see something like that, mockumentary style. But then, if they did that, we’d all be clamoring to see a standalone movie from the film-within-a-film. Whatever we don’t get tends to be what we’re the most curious about.

Sasquatch Sunset contains no spoken lines, which makes for lots of quiet parts. Not only did my showing get audio bleed-through from other theaters, I could tell what movie was playing in the one next door. This is a year in the life (and death, and birth) of a family of four Sasquatches, who roam around in the Pacific Northwest over the course of four seasons, starting with spring. In a fun way that I won’t spoil, we get a clue that would give us a timeframe of the 1980s or early 90s. There are only four people in the cast. Two of them, we have to trust, are Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg. I’m not sure who they played. It could literally not be them in the movie, and I wouldn’t know.

There is a copious amount of peeing and pooping. They vomit green, and drink some chunky red stuff from a large dead fish. The former unsettled me, but the latter looked like spaghetti sauce. Both probably tasted good. The parents (let’s face it, mainly the father) enjoy loudly participating in an animal’s basic instinct in front of the children. They are mostly indistinguishable, but thin, ever-present flopping appendages let us know which ones are the males. I was looking forward to some scenes of torrential weather, but the movie plays it safe in that department. Over the course of the year it takes place, it’s almost always a beautiful, cloudless sunny day.

The locations are lovely to see, and I liked a couple of passages. When they see a country road, it blows their minds, and there’s a great gag where they look one way and freak out, look the other way, freak out, then look the first way again, and have the same reaction like it’s new. Films have been made with hikers/campers coming across unwanted animal life. It’s enjoyable how Sasquatch Sunset flips that. Whenever this family ventures into territory with tents, spray-painted X marks from hunters, and other human-made things, there’s a sense of foreboding, and for once, we root for the other side. These bits could have gone over just as well in my fantasy pseudo-documentary. Everything else feels like filler.

I give Sasquatch Sunset points for originality. You’re not likely to have seen something like this often, if ever. A blurb from a critic that shows up in the trailer calls it a one-of-a-kind, unique unicorn of a movie. Can’t argue with that – so on that level, I’d say “you tried something different. Good for you. Hope it was fun. Now that it’s out of your system, let’s not visit this again.” Now, what was it like to film this? What drew everybody to this project? Where did the cast and crew have lunch (I bet it was quite scenic), and what did they have to eat? That’s what interests me.

Grade: C+