CR: Zoo

White text over a black screen begins the story: a man is dropped off at an emergency room in a rural section Washington. The man is suffering from massive internal bleeding, his colon destroyed, and dies. Police use surveillance camera footage to track the car to an isolated horse farm and discover hours of video footage of men having sex with horses. And thus begins Zoo from director Robinson Devor (his third doc to screen at Sundance, his previous credits include the critically acclaimed The Woman Chaser and Police Beat), making it’s world premiere in the Documentary Competition.

The film is very sympathetic to it’s subjects, many of which who agreed to appear as themselves on camera (several of which declined). Devor successfully creates a portrait of a group of men who connect with each other over the internet, and then eventually in person at an isolated horse ranch in Washington (Washington is the only state where sex with an animal is not automatically considered an animal cruelty violation). Yes, they eventually have sex with the horses at the farm, but their group is much more than a few perverts looking for kicks. At first their outings are little more than weekend getaways, where they find comfort and emotional support in being around other men who must suppress the same desires on a daily basis. As time goes on, their friendships evolve, the bond these men share become stronger, and then it all falls apart with the tragic death of one of them.

This is not the exercise in extreme cinema you might expect from a documentary about bestiality (or the exercise in extreme cinema that it could have been), and that is both the film’s savior and what also holds it back from being a better film. Devor is rightfully sympathetic to the men, who face a strong degree of social alienation because of their status as ‘zoo’ (short for ‘zoophile’). These men feel a genuine love and emotional connection to horses, much in the way any healthy person would feel for their pet. The difference is the subjects of Zoo feel the desire to express this love in a physical, sexual way whereas the majority of the rest of the world is satisfied with brushing their pet and giving him/her a treat – though one of the men interviewed claims there are more zoophiles in the word than one would imagine, and that he’s communicated with men from all over the globe, including men in Japan, South America, and soldiers stationed in Iraq. Long story short, it’s not just a sex thing for men who are truly ‘zoo.’ Sure, they record hundreds of hours of video of them having sex with horses, but think of how many couples in the world make homemade porn-videos for some healthy kinky fun (just look at PornoTube.com). In all his effort to evoke empathy for his subjects, Devor forgets to examine the issue from other angles. An interview with a psychologist, someone who had studied zoophilia in an academic manner, would have done wonders for the film. Also, the internet is a major factor in these men finding an connecting with each other, but then vanishes from the story in the first thirty minutes. The film also wastes time on overly dramatized reenactments, time that could have been better spent on giving the audience a portrait of its characters’ minds, and not only their hearts. Overall, it is an interesting film, but not a complete film, or as thorough examination as it should have been (or that the subject demands).