A wordless sasquatch film is certainly an audacious idea on paper. But it hasn’t been a month since we had an almost wordless beaver film (Hundreds of Beavers), which was fantastic. Clearly, cinema in 2024 is going way beyond the usual, and Sasquatch Sunset is a profound example of that. In the David and Nathan Zellner-directed Bigfoot film, the main characters refrain from saying anything, which only adds value to it. Despite the lack of dialogue, Sasquatch Sunset has a pretty clear narrative, which turns the story into a four-season tale. It’s often hard to sit through thanks to its extremely gross nature, but it is also quite an experience if you have a thing for a certain kind of weirdness. The film categorizes itself as a comedy, but it is quite heavy and also packs a message by the end. In case you are feeling lost after watching Sasquatch Sunset, we’re here to help.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens in the Movie?
I would take a moment to appreciate the actors who went through rigorous training in order to get the sasquatch behavior right. Especially for A-listers like Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg, showing this kind of commitment to roles where they would look completely unrecognizable is absolutely commendable. In case you’re unfamiliar with the lore of bigfoot, they’re a mythical, hairy creature rumored to be found in North-Western America or Canada. While Sasquatch Sunset never really clarifies the time period or location, there’s enough hints for us to deduce that it is the late eighties or early nineties, and the wilderness that we see has to be that region of America.
It begins with four sasquatches—a rather ill-mannered, off-putting alpha male, a male, a female, and a child. In the spring, the sasquatches roam around the forest, eat, sleep, and count stars. That’s all the life they have, other than the alpha male regularly getting involved with the female. However, the alpha male has a tiff with the other three when he gets aroused after eating a bunch of wild fruit and a mushroom, and the female refuses to get physical with him. Enraged, he tries to find pleasure with a mountain lion and gets punished for his stupidity. The child discovers the body later, which is still being ravaged by the lion.
What Happens in Summer?
In the summer, the male sasquatch gets aroused by seeing the heavily pregnant female, but his advances get rejected by her. Soon after that, the male gets accidentally trapped in a river under a marked wooden log. The female and the child try their best to get him out of that situation, but their efforts go in vain as the current of the water takes the male. When the body floats on the water, a bunch of crows arrive to have a feast, but the female and the child shoo them away.
And then what happens?
Fall comes, as it was always supposed to. Life goes on for the female and the child. One day, they stumble on a campsite. There’s no human being in sight, but we do see a lot of human things around. In what I consider the “scene” of the movie, the female somehow manages to figure out how to play a tape recorder and blasts “Love to Hate You” (yes, the iconic synth-pop number by Erasure) out of it. Both she and the child are initially overwhelmed, and then they get engaged and wreck the campsite. The most likely explanation could be that the sasquatches couldn’t accept that other species (read, human beings) were intruding into their world. If you think about it, they’ve already seen roads made with pitch and logs, which are most definitely marks of human habitation. When the child playfully hits the female with a frisbee, the female’s water breaks, and she abruptly pops out the baby. The mountain lion appears, but the sasquatches succeed in surviving by throwing the baby’s placenta at it. It’s not exactly an easy thing to watch, and I do understand why some people walked out of the theater—just saying!
Do the Sasquatches Survive?
In its last leg, Sasquatch Sunset slips into the winter, and as expected, it appears to be quite challenging. They steal a farmed chicken, and the female saves the child from falling into a bear trap. The worst of all is that the baby almost dies due to asphyxia; however, the female saves it in the nick of time. And then comes the ending. The sasquatches see smoke from afar. Following the smoke, they reach a place that should most definitely be considered the most habitable area seen in the whole film—a museum, a parking lot, but most importantly, a sasquatch statue. The female and the child are obviously amazed, but when they try to communicate with the statue, it doesn’t respond. And Sasquatch Sunset calls it day, leaving us here.
The obvious question here is: What does Sasquatch Sunset‘s ending (and this whole film) really try to say? Here’s how I see it: the last scene is basically an implication of the sasquatches being an extinct or non-existing kind. The whole concept of the bigfoot is pretty much a myth in the first place. For a creature like a sasquatch to actually exist, there has to be an abundance of wilderness. From start to finish, Sasquatch Sunset attempts to take that wilderness away from the creatures. Even though we don’t see any humans, there’s still enough evidence of mankind intruding into their world. And the way the female gets absolutely infuriated by the campsite and destroys it, it can be said that these sasquatches are best left alone. The baffling looks in the eyes of the female and the child in the final scene pretty much say that the world is becoming unfamiliar for them. The forest is now plagued by humans, doing their things for the sake of development. Even if bigfoot ever existed at some point in time, it is impossible for them to live in this world. Sasquatch Sunset takes a swing at exploring why and how these creatures went extinct and pretty much became a myth. It’s an odd film, for sure, but maybe a necessary one as well.
