Directed by Nathan & David Zellner, “Sasquatch Sunset” (2024) is easily one of the strangest films to have come in the recent past. As the title suggests, the film revolves around Sasquatch aka Bigfoot, which is a giant, mythical creature said to have been noticed in certain parts of America. It follows a group of Sasquatch that live their daily lives without any human interference. The film has no dialogue and involves these creatures grunting or using hand gestures to communicate with each other. Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg, Christophe Zajac-Denek, and Nathan Zellner play these creatures under heavy, hairy suits.
Spoilers Ahead
Sasquatch Sunset (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
Written by David Zellner, “Sasquatch Sunset” is a strange comedic adventure that follows a group of Sasquatch as they go on with their daily lives in the wilderness. They mostly exist in this natural habitat without any exposure to human evolution. While communicating through grunts & gestures, they live together like a family unit.
What happens in ‘Sasquatch Sunset’?
“Sasquatch Sunset” follows a group of Sasquatch in spring in the woods. There’s an Alpha Male (played by Nathan Zellner), a male (played by Jesse Eisenberg), a female (played by Riley Keough) and a child (played by Christophe Zajac-Denek). We see them act like a human family and play their specific parts within it. The difference is they are not exposed to the growth and development that is part of modern human life. They travel from place to place as a community like nomads, surviving on whatever is available.
For survival, they gather food, eat, and clean themselves with the available resources. They create their shelter with wood, leaves, and sticks and reside there from time to time. Since there is just a single female in their group, the males look at her as a source of their pleasure. The female submits to their whims while being around them. She also feeds her milk to the child. Across their journey, the group explores several things with awe and wonder. The child looks at a tortoise and tries to eat it but gets its tongue stuck inside its shell. So, an older male helps him get it out.
The Survival
By smelling her body, the female realizes that she is pregnant. The alpha male tries to prove his position of power and control but faces the female’s rejection, so he starts acting erratically. While the female builds the shelter, he approaches her from behind. She starts screaming in protest, followed by the beta male and the child. So, the alpha male destroys their shelter. Because of his selfish, reckless act, the others exclude him from their group.
After getting his ego hurt, the horny alpha male approaches a lioness for sexual pleasure. Instead, she hunts him and starts devouring his organs. The next day, the child finds the dead alpha male in the woods and calls the female & the beta male for assistance. Together, they scare away the lioness, take the alpha male’s body for the post-death rituals and bury him. Eventually, by the summer, the female informs the two males about her pregnancy. Although she arouses the beta male, she denies his request for sex. Soon after, the group finds a red cross mark on a tree but can’t figure out what to make of it.
The Target
After finding a marked wood, the group of sasquatch finds a concrete road. Since they can’t understand its origin or purpose, they mark it with their urine, faeces, and breast milk. Soon after, they reach a river and find a log with the same cross mark. The male stands over it and starts jumping. But he falls off of it and gets his foot stuck underneath. The female, who is already under the burden of her impending childbirth, goes to help him from a trouble he created. Unfortunately, neither she nor her child can save the male get out of the trap. The male drowns in the water under the log. Like before, they bury this male and grieve.
Sasquatch Sunset (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
What happens to the female sasquatch in the end?
By fall, the female and the child discover a campsite while its owners are away. The sasquatches look at all the human-made things and try to figure out their purpose. Their initial instinct is to smell and try to eat it. While looking around, they find a boombox and turn on a song. – ‘Love to Hate You’. Although they do not understand the language, they get emotional by the power of music. Eventually, they snap out of it and create a wreck on the site due to a sudden rush of emotions. Soon after, the child throws a frisbee at the mother, which causes her water to break.
While the mother gives birth to a newborn child, a mountain lioness looks at them from a distance. To protect themselves, the mother offers the placenta to the lioness and runs away with the children. Later on, in winter, they find a chicken inside a cage and take it with them. One night, she worries her newborn child died and resuscitates it. While walking around, she notices some signs unlike what she had experienced before, be it some metal instruments or a giant smoke rising nearby. The sasquatches follow it to find a museum of a collection of bigfoot-related items with a giant bigfoot replica at the front.
Sasquatch Sunset (2024) Movie Themes Analysed
Family & Community
“Sasquatch Sunset” follows a group of Sasquatch that functions similarly to a human community and feels like a human family. Just like humans, the female sasquatch needs to take on the most responsibilities. But she is denied agency over her bodily choices by the males. The alpha male operates like an orthodox family patriarch, demanding control for just existing as a male figure and wrecking things out of his fragile ego. These creatures experience communal activities, experience joy, pain, and sorrow, much similar to how we do.
Survival in an Everchanging World
The central theme of “Sasquatch Sunset” is the characters’ existence in a constantly evolving world. For much of the film, we see them exist without any clear signs of human existence or evolution around them. They survive in the wilderness like hunter-gatherers until they start noticing human-made things they cannot explain or fully understand. Their journey for survival also shows the naivety of humans who want to go back to the way things were before the growth of civilization.
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