In 2005 a bizarre new story spread from the sleepy rural town of Enumclaw, WA -- a man died of internal injuries sustained while attempting a sexual act with a horse. It was discovered the man was part of a small group of zoophiliacs -- people who crave erotic contact with animals -- and that they had been engaging in various activities with local animals for some time. While investigating the incident, Washington police authorities discovered the state had no laws on the books concerning
bestiality, and Sen. Pam Roach quickly introduced legislation which would make it illegal. While the story became a national news item after hitting the Internet, Seattle-based filmmaker Robinson Devor was curious about what sort of people became involved in the underground world of zoophilia, and Zoo is a docudrama which explores the horse sex case, the other members of the zoophile ring (two members of the group participated in the production of the film), the animal rescue organization that took possession of the horses, and the legislators and law enforcement officers who reacted to the case. Originally produced under the title In the Forest There Is Every Kind of Bird, Zoo was screened in competition at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
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.
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.
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.
With its oblique, sometimes coyly pretentious approach (and suffocating, incessant score), Devor's film skates around this complex subject on the thin ice of its pretty aesthetic.
Devor has made an intriguing but flawed docu about bestiality, in which the aesthtic and bizarre imagery negates his more serious and critical probation.
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.
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.
Zoo doesn't exactly deal with the subject of bestiality. Instead it provides testimony of the events leading up to a mans death via penetration by a horse. It is an expose on the lives of a select group of men that feel more connected with animals than they do humans. These are not the sick weirdos you'd expect. They
are normal and seemingly intelligent men. The film is shot as a beautiful reconstruction. Every scene is lit perfectly and has a dream like quality. It results in a film that you wish had been played as a fictional narrative. The film does not take shots at anyone and is a genuine attempt to understand these men and have them tell their story.
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