‘Sasquatch’: Three takeaways from new true-crime series on folkloric beast
FOR the skeptics, conspiracy theorists and true-blue believers among us, monsters are everywhere. Lurking in the shadows. In closets. In the woods. In the murky depths of our waters. Maybe even living in our midst.
“Sasquatch,” a new Hulu documentary series produced by brothers Mark and Jay Duplass (“Wild Wild Country”), takes America’s long fascination with the folkloric, woodland beast as a starting point and weaves it with the growing wave of popular true-crime tales that equally scratch at an unknowable itch. In simplest summary, “Sasquatch” asks: Did such a creature really the kill three men in 1993 on a marijuana farm in Northern California? Is Sasquatch wanted for murder?
A quick primer, first, for those unfamiliar with the ongoing saga of the hairy giant: The mythical being is not necessarily unique to America (the yeti or Abominable Snowman of Himalayan lore shares similar traits) but is interchangeably known as Sasquatch or Bigfoot.
The former name is taken from indigenous cultural phrases, and the latter comes by way of supposed found evidence, including massive sunken prints found by hikers or trackers in the Pacific Northwest.
Then there’s the matter of what Sasquatch looks like.
One feature makes it most captivating to the imagination: It kind of looks as if the human evolutionary chart got taller and hairier. This almost-kinship with a smelly, solitary and insanely buff bipedal ape puts it on our level of understanding. It’s why Sasquatch appears as a common character in our urban legends, spooky campfire stories and, yes, even erotica.
It’s no surprise then that “Sasquatch” uses its title beastie as a fitting cipher for other monster stories we like to tell ourselves. It gets at our most intimate, deep-seated fears of the “other.” The Sasquatch myth even falls in with the national divide, as one of the truest and silliest ways to pit believers against nonbelievers.
The three-part series, currently streaming on Hulu and directed by Joshua Rofé (who made a 2019 documentary that revisited the case of Lorena Bobbitt), recounts a story from gonzo investigative journalist turned filmmaker David Holthouse, who also narrates and acts as on-screen guide.
Holthouse remembers a night, while working at a pot farm in the fall of 1993 in Mendocino County, Calif., in which a group of migrant workers came back shaken and convinced that a Sasquatch had just killed three people in the woods.
The series takes the viewer on Holthouse’s winding investigation into Sasquatch lore, the murder in question (along with possible related incidents) and an examination of the types of communities that are typically ignored or might prefer to operate in the shadows.
Along with a spoiler alert,here are some takeaways from “Sasquatch”:
It’s not really about Sasquatch
Here’s the “but.”
The first episode takes a fairly serious interrogation into Sasquatch mythology and the people who devote time and energy trying to prove its existence.
But by Episode 2, aspiring and existing cryptozoologists might be disappointed as Holthouse and Rofé sort of shoo away further exploration of the big, bad beast in favor of the (sometimes too on-the-nose) explicitly stated monsters of our own design. — The Washington Post