The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Of monsters and men
Hulu docuseries ‘Sasquatch’ uses legend as entry point for murder investigation relatively successfully
The new Hulu documentary series “Sasquatch” is concerned with more than one type of monster.
Debuting April 20, the three-part affair deals not just with its namesake legendary species — also commonly referred to as “bigfoot” — but about the monsters men can be.
“Sasquatch” is directed by Joshua Rofé (“Lorena,” “Swift Current”) and executive produced by brothers Mark and Jay Duplass and Mel Eslyn of Duplass Brothers Productions (“Wild Wild Country,” “Evil Genius”). Consistently entertaining but only infrequently engrossing, it evolves into something less about the supposed hairy creature some believe to be hidden throughout Californian’s tall redwood forests and more about men who may have killed to protect their interest within the state’s illegal marijuana industry of the last few decades.
The three-hour series follows investigative journalist David Holthouse as he looks into a rumored killing of three Mexican men in Northern California cannabis country in 1993. Holthouse’s interest in the event is understandable considering that, through happenstance, he was at a marijuana farm in 1993 when a couple of men — whom he believes to have been under the influence of crystal meth — arrived with a story of the three having been slaughtered. Those tale-telling men did not witness the murder but instead came upon a scene where mangled body parts were strewn bout but where no product had been stolen. The pot had been ripped up, like the people, but not taken.
It was the work of a sasquatch, one asserted.
“He said, ‘I’m telling you, man — a bigfoot killed those guys!’” Holthouse says early in the first episode, “Grabbing at Smoke.”
Although he can find no law-enforcement documents that help to corroborate that the slayings even happened, he can’t shake the memory from his time there a quarter of a century earlier.
“Those woods are a spooky place,” he says. “And it does feel, in those woods, like you’re being watched,
OK? You find yourself twitching a little bit.”
The first hour of “Sasquatch” centers around the enduring legend of the bigfoot, with Holthouse interviewing a number of experts, including Jerry Hein, a “sasquatch hunter,” and Bob Gimlin, a “legendary sasquatch hunter.”
It also introduces us to a pair of men who are hunters and life partners and who bicker on camera about whether one believes a sasquatch can teleport.
“No, I do not!” the one insists.
We would have welcomed more of them.
And while Holthouse also talks to a retired police officer who struggles to compose himself when recalling a traumatic night where he believes he may have survived an encounter with such a creature, “Grabbing at Smoke” is the most fun of the three installments.
The second episode, “Spy Rock,” begins with a few minutes devoted to a man who claims to have worn a bigfoot suit more than three decades ago when a creature was believed by some to have been captured in a grainy video, but the series soon shifts its focus to the marijuana farms and the people involved with them. Specifically, “Sasquatch” spotlights the Emerald Triangle, the region consisting of Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties and known for its cannabis production.
The area includes Spy Rock Road, a stretch of land home to farms and largely shrouded in mystery. At one point, Holthouse is warned he shouldn’t go there without an invitation and ask a bunch of questions to folks who work or own property there.
Moments in which Holthouse may need to consider his safety are peppered throughout “Sasquatch.” And while the journalist points to a traumatic event from his childhood as to why he’s not easily intimidated, he does admit to being a bit wary of at least one man the trail leads him to in the series’ final hour, “Monsters Among Us.”
“Sasquatch” offers some insight into the life of an investigator such as this journalist, Holthouse playing hunches and following a few once-promising leads to dead ends.
We won’t say what his investigation concludes, of course, but the last several minutes of the series are among its most enthrawling.
Even at only three hours, “Sasquatch” feels a little bloated in the way today’s docuseries often do. It probably would have been more compelling cut by a third, but its footprint certainly is not egregiously big.
In general, Rofé does solid work putting “Sasquatch” together, incorporating what the series acknowledges are, at times, re-created phone conversations between the journalist and sources, along with some basic animation that helps to give it some needed flavor.