Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough in bigfoot costumes in a dialogue-free cringe comedy from the creators of the series 'The Curse'. And producing all this magnificence was none other than Ari Aster. How crazy 'Sasquatch Sunset' turned out—read on in t...

The plot covers the life of a group of bigfoots over the course of one year. However, with each subsequent change of season, it becomes less believable that this small tribe will survive the proverbial natural selection by Darwin and even survive as a species. The snow people themselves are played by Jesse Eisenberg, Riley Keough, and one of the film's directors, Nathan Zellner.

There is essentially no plot in the film. It is more of a collection of absurdist sketches held together by two common threads: the pregnancy of Keough's character and the gradual encroachment of human civilization on the bigfoots' lands. It becomes obvious to the viewer that the characters are completely unsuited not only for the human world but even for their own natural world—they are extremely stupid, which causes their population to rapidly decline. For example, one of the heroes eats hallucinogenic mushrooms and decides to engage in an unequal fight with a puma, while his relatives try to scare the beast away by throwing stones at their comrade's body. The original title of the film is 'Sasquatch Sunset,' which essentially matches the content.

The film was made on the principle of 'so bad it's good,' but in my opinion, it turned out just bad. 'Sasquatch Sunset' should probably be perceived as intentionally trashy, cringe-inducing cinema, not taken seriously, but even if you set aside all the toilet humor, the road episode, and the extremely naturalistic birth scene, the Zellner brothers' work loses to other dialogue-free sketch comedies in all aspects. Not long ago, as part of the 'Wild Nights' program at the Moscow International Film Festival, they showed 'Hundreds of Beavers'. That slapstick in the style of silent films with Charlie Chaplin and the Benny Hill Show is an order of magnitude funnier and more inventive than 'Sasquatch Sunset,' simply due to the chosen visual narrative form. And the concentration of humor is higher there.

But still, the new film has one undeniable merit: the Zellner brothers' movie can sometimes be considered an attraction of aesthetic contemplation. The landscapes of California nature look incredibly mesmerizing, supported by good cinematography. And the soundtrack by the psychedelic group The Octopus Project combines notes of both a family adventure road movie and a surreal farce. The final composition 'The Creatures of Nature', performed by Riley Keough herself, is quite touching in its own right.

'Sasquatch Sunset' could have worked well as a three-minute comedy sketch on Saturday Night Live, but certainly not as a feature-length film. After watching, I have only two questions. How did the ambassador of intellectual horror Ari Aster and the lead actors get involved in this? And how to live after the scene where the characters find an asphalt road and decide to mark their territory?

Trailer: