The film chronicles the lives of a Sasquatch family: a patriarch (played by Nathan Zellner himself!), a matriarch (Riley Keough), their eldest son (Jesse Eisenberg) and youngest son (Christophe Zajac-Denek). Their days seem to primarily involve getting their basic needs met, as with most animals. They forage, fart, and fornicate, and never in any particular order, as their actions seem to be almost totally in response to whatever stimuli is around them at any moment.
Through the din of such monotony, however, a few intriguing quirks begin to emerge. The female ‘squatch becomes enamored with the smell of her own sex, but violently refuses the male’s clumsy attempts to initiate coupling. The elder son attempts to count whatever objects he happens to find, but sadly cannot count above three. The younger son, meanwhile, begins using his right hand as a sort of puppet character, making it “talk,” eat snow, and other such imaginative silliness. While these Sasquatch have not formed a spoken language, their behavior seems to mark them as having above the average intelligence of an animal, and below the intelligence of an average human.
Thanks in large part to Mike Gioulakis’ gorgeously bucolic cinematography, “Sasquatch Sunset” is a remarkably watchable movie, despite the numerous attempts by the Zellners to gross out their audience — at one point, the ‘squatches are so frightened by the discovery of a paved road that they decide to excrete every bodily fluid possible onto it as a way of asserting dominance. Despite the moments of immature humor, the film features four performances that feel utterly considered and observed (of animals in general, since actual Sasquatches were out of the question). It’s honestly difficult to see the actors’ real faces through the makeup, allowing the illusion of living, breathing Sasquatches to feel complete.