Watching Sasquatch Sundown is an intoxicating expertise, partly as a result of it’s so unusual — whereas disgusting and heartfelt — that it feels at occasions extra like a hallucination than a movie that might truly exist. If nothing else, it is the sweetest film ever made that options shit-flinging. 

Buzzed about out of its Sundance premiere, Sasquatch Sundown facilities on a household of nomadic cryptids, who hunt, collect, sleep, hoot, and battle amid a towering wilderness. In some respects, the movie’s co-directors, brothers David and Nathan Zellner, conceptualized Sasquatch Sundown like a nature documentary, with broad angles taking within the huge forests across the eponymous critters. Quiet close-ups invite human audiences to hunt which means within the furrowed forehead of the bigfoot household, who talk in growls, grunts, and howls. But there isn’t a voiceover narrator so as to add context, or ease us in understanding the bizarre methods of those beasts. And David Attenborough would blush on the animalistic nature the Zellners painting, which incorporates spraying urine, flinging feces, onscreen mating, full-frontal Sasquatch genitals, and a most ingenious use for afterbirth. (Nope. Not that one.)

There is definitely a self-aware humor to those boldly gross-out moments. However the Zellners have one thing extra severe stirring on the movie’s core. 

Sasquatch Sundown is shouldered by Riley Keough. 

Riley Keough stars as a bigfoot in “Sasquatch Sundown.”
Credit score: Bleeker Road

Between 2014’s whimsical drama Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter and the 2018 offbeat Western dramedy Damsel, the Zellner Brothers have constructed a fame for making movies that shift radically but poetically in tone. Their narratives are weird, bittersweet, and exquisite. With Sasquatch Sundown, they proceed on this path, colliding a honest household drama with scatological humor and star energy flocked in fur. 

Riley Keough, the American actress who’s performed free-spirited beauties in Logan Fortunate, Below the Silver Lake, Zola, and Daisy and the Six, is actually unrecognizable right here, lined head to toe in prosthetics and fur reworking her right into a mom Sasquatch. Becoming a member of her — and likewise mythically remodeled — are co-director Nathan Zellner, who performs an aggressive alpha male; Jesse Eisenberg, as a delicate beta male; and Christophe Zajac-Denek as a Sasquatch cub. 

At first, it may be a problem to make out who’s who, because the household resemblance is robust in hair shade and down-turned expression. However earlier than lengthy, the human eyes peering beneath the pronounced prosthetic brows turn into distinctive sufficient. Zellner defines his brute with a hulking physicality and surly glare. Zajac-Denek bounces about with a guileless lightness, a babe within the woods. Eisenberg putters concerning the forest so gently, it is simple to think about his Sasquatch becoming in amid a famer’s market. Really, at occasions, his efficiency feels so humanly neurotic that it could break the suspension of disbelief, turning the fastidiously rendered full-body make-up right into a mascot costume being capered in. However Keough, who additionally produced the movie, turns into its emotional middle. When she stomps her huge, funky foot, you possibly can really feel the literal and metaphorical weight of it.

As unpredictable turns of destiny hit her household, this Sasquatch responds with rage, agony, panic, and, sure, sometimes poop flinging. And whereas the male Sasquatches are made for visible punchlines involving their macho hubris, floppy phalluses, or ineptitude to outlive on their very own, Keough’s mom carries the burden of carrying on — and carrying a being pregnant over the course of a year-long journey. It’s her mournful eyes that scream in exhaustion as she breastfeeds, scares off would-be predators, or stares out into the wilderness that communicates most powerfully what Sasquatch Sundown is all about. 

Deforestation is the silent villain of Sasquatch Sundown. 

Three Sasquatches stand on a hillside.
Credit score: Bleeker Road

Early on, it is clear this clan of cryptids is on a quest to search out extra of their form. They’ve a ritual of cries that decision out to the miles of mountain and woods round them, begging for a reply. As they journey, looking for different Sasquatch, indicators of human hurt on their land pop up: A sprig-painted X on a soon-to-be felled tree right here; a tenting tent full of snacks there. With every, an unstated risk is made, one which the viewers — however not the unsuspecting Sasquatch — understands. And so a stress grows, at the same time as we would chuckle over the youngest critter giddily gobbling up sweet buttons with abandon. People can imply nothing good for these untamed creatures. 

The Zellners weave this advocacy for environmentalism amid goofy gags about intercourse, bodily features, and violence. But their which means is as not possible to disregard because the world-weary expression on the feminine Sasquatch’s face as she faces one other day.

On this mix of the unusual and nostalgic, the ardent and the asinine, Sasquatch Sundown feels radical and ridiculous. Should you squint you possibly can simply think about a remake with goofier grunting and maybe the likes of Will Ferrell or Kevin Hart in fits that do not disguise their well-known options. The restraint the Zellners present is a part of what makes Sasquatch Sundown so extraordinary. It’s unabashedly a gross-out comedy, urging audiences to giggle over the goopy muck of intercourse, loss of life, and childbirth. But simply beneath this sticky floor, there’s an ardent disappointment, warning of the ravages mankind brings with our conquering and carelessness. Which isn’t to say some vignettes do not fall a bit flat. Even at an hour and 29 minutes, the movie can really feel mundane and meandering at occasions. 

General; nonetheless, Sasquatch Sundown is a daringly formidable and fascinatingly audacious household drama that is certain to trigger giggles, gasps, and gagging. 

Sasquatch Sundown was reviewed out of SXSW 2024; the movie will open in choose theaters April 12, increasing nationwide on April 19.