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MOVIES / ON DVD / ZOO
Zoo

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Zoo (2007)

56%
56%
71%
N/A
N/A
N/A
56 %
Reviews Counted: 43 Fresh: 24  Rotten:19 Average Rating: 6/10
 
Consensus: Bogged down by its overly artistic presentation. While a marginally fascinating look at a taboo subject, Zoo is bogged down by its overly artistic presentation. more
 
Rated: Not Rated
Runtime: 80 mins
Theatrical Release: 2007
Synopsis:
One of the many challenges of documentary filmmaking can often be how to present shocking or outrageous events without sensationalizing them. With ZOO, film writers Robinson Devor and Charles Mudede certainly had their work cut out for them. In 2006, a news story broke that a man in... [More]
One of the many challenges of documentary filmmaking can often be how to present shocking or outrageous events without sensationalizing them. With ZOO, film writers Robinson Devor and Charles Mudede certainly had their work cut out for them. In 2006, a news story broke that a man in Washington state had died while trying to have sex with a horse. Using a rather unconventional documentary style, Devor and Mudede decided to explore the incident, and delve into the secretive subculture of zoophilia. Foregoing the traditional interview techniques generally favored in documentaries, the film is composed almost entirely of scene reenactment, with actors standing in for all of the key players. The real people involved would lend only their taped voices, as they did not wish for their true identities to be revealed. Visually, the film is quite beautiful, and flows across the screen with a dreamy, ethereal quality. Scenes are often shaded in deep violets and midnight blues, and the many shadowed, slow motion shots move as though underwater. Contrary to what one might expect, it is devoid of graphic imagery (save for one extremely brief scene), and anyone interested for shock value alone will be greatly disappointed. However, those wishing to learn more about the psychology of zoophilia will also find the film lacking. Rather than educate its audience, the film's sole purpose seems to be to humanize the people involved, and to ask for empathy. This is a noble enough goal, and one that the filmmakers achieve to a certain degree. However, by the film's end, the world of zoophiliacs still feels cloaked in mystery. If their lives are lived in shadow, ZOO doesn't do much in the way of shedding any light. Viewers will doubtless be stirred emotionally by the film, but they are likely to walk away with more questions than answers. [Less]

Genre: Dramas

Starring: John Paulsen, Russell Hodgkinson, Michael Minard

Director: Robinson Devor
Screenwriter: Charles Mudede
Producer: Peggy Case, Alexis Ferris
Composer: Paul Moore

DVD Info

Release:

Sep 18, 2007

[DVD Details]

DVD Features:

  • Region 1
  • Keep Case
  • Anamorphic Widescreen

Audio:

  • Unspecified - English

Buy It On DVD

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Ratings Image

Devor has made an intriguing but flawed docu about bestiality, in which the overly aesthtic and bizarre imagery often negates his more serious and critical probation, resulting in a shallow work.

Full Review | Comment
11/02/07 01:42 PM
Emanuel Levy
EmanuelLevy.Com
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Despite the interesting questions they raise, it seems the filmmakers' plea for tolerance prevailed over true intellectual honesty and the serious study of a psychologically troubling behavior.

Full Review | Comment
09/24/07 01:16 PM
Kevin Koehler
Pretentious Musings
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a bizarre, moody entry that's part documentary, part drama.

Full Review | Comment
09/22/07 03:55 PM
Norm Schrager
Filmcritic.com
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The legacy of Chris Marker weeps when the future of essay filmmaking looks like a feature-length commercial for Ambien.

Full Review | Comment
09/21/07 04:11 PM
Eric Henderson
Slant Magazine
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Director Robinson Devor makes an only mildly disgusting film about a wholly revolting subject.

Full Review | Comment
07/05/07 07:44 AM
Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star
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Zoo is the formal antithesis of To Catch a Predator-like exposés in its presentation of outcasts.

Full Review | Comment
06/25/07 04:07 AM
Sky Hirschkron
Stylus Magazine
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Time and again, Devor sabotages his own attempt to bring 'zoos,' literally and figuratively, into the light.

Full Review | Comment
06/02/07 03:23 AM
Marjorie Baumgarten
Austin Chronicle
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Click to read the article

Full Review | Comment
05/26/07 03:26 AM
Los Angeles Daily News
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Punch lines and outrage come easy, but beware: If you walk into this film with a secure moral judgment, prepare to have it shaken by the time you leave.

Full Review | Comment
05/25/07 03:55 PM
Neva Chonin
San Francisco Chronicle
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Zoo would be laughable if it weren't in such bad taste.

Full Review | Comment
05/24/07 05:11 PM
Jeff Vice
Deseret News, Salt Lake City
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Zoo, with its idiosyncratic subject matter, may not be the easiest sell in the world, but anyone interested in provocative, challenging, and unexpected fare owes it to themselves to check it out.

Full Review | Comment
05/19/07 03:25 AM
Pam Grady
Reel.com
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Zoo, despite its elegance, teeters on a tightrope; by relying primarily on words from men who seem reluctant to talk much about what happened, it ends up having little to say.

Full Review | Comment
05/11/07 03:12 PM
Moira MacDonald
Seattle Times
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It's never explicit or sensational or tittering. And in that it's something of a golden example; political documentaries should be this careful and restrained.

Full Review | Comment
05/11/07 03:10 PM
Shawn Levy
Oregonian
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This experimental-style documentary invokes the waking dreams of David Lynch, Werner Herzog and Errol Morris. It's like a true-crime inquiry undertaken during a total eclipse.

Full Review | Comment
05/11/07 03:05 PM
Bill Stamets
Chicago Sun-Times
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The film's techniques are implicit, not explicit, its soothing images of rural highways and nighttime solitude conveying the social blankness its subjects report.

Full Review | Comment
05/10/07 05:51 PM
Gianni Truzzi
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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Devor has an eye; this is clear. If he trades some of the poetry for a little prose next time out, he'll really have something, whatever his subject.

Full Review | Comment
05/10/07 05:15 PM
Michael Phillips
Chicago Tribune
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Devor's moody style (silhouettes, reenactments, an ominously throbbing score) only heightens the sleazy Dateline NBC feel.

Full Review | Comment
05/10/07 05:13 PM
Chicago Reader
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Zoo is a cool sensibility married to a hot topic, a poetic film about a forbidden, unsettling subject.

Full Review | Comment
05/04/07 03:37 PM
Kenneth Turan
Los Angeles Times
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You could wander into this poetic documentary willing to be sympathetic toward its subject -- men who have sex with horses -- and still find Zoo cryptic and borderline bogus.

Full Review | Comment
05/03/07 11:08 AM
Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly
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It seems almost perverse to willfully take a subject so bizarre and disturbing and esthetize it into something beautiful, but, love it or hate it, there's no denying the film's seductive power.

Full Review | Comment
05/03/07 08:04 AM
Jeremy C. Fox
Pajiba
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