Zoo is pretty much what you'd think it was about, although not in the way anyone probably expected. It's told through re-enactments, mostly of middle aged guys hanging out and drinking and wandering around town while the actual people involved in this tell you how normal they are and how normal playing with a horse's balls is to get your kicks. I'm not making any of this up.At first I was incredulous, because the filmmaker is really trying to paint these people up a misunderstood and decent folks who happen to love animals so much they're more interested in having sex with them than humans. Again, I must stress this is coming from things said by the people who owned and frequented this ranch in Enumclaw, Washington.
There are some kind of disturbing bits in this movie, but the two that stand out is the shot of actors playing the men (and the one guy who plays himself) stroking these devices used to tighten around a horse's testicles, and the scene where police find the video of "Mr. Hands" in the act of being bred by the horse, and forcing the owner of said horse to watch the video, even after he vomits and tries to leave the room, just so one of the cops can say (not making this shit up) "is that your horse?"
Speaking of which, Happy Horseman, one of the gentlemen involved, has some narration as the scene plays, where he says "you can't even say that the horse is having sex with him in the tape. All you can see is the horse doing something."
Which of course is why he tried to destroy all of the videos in the ranch while running from the authorities.
And why are none of the men who refuse to share their real names or be seen on camera in jail right now? Well, it turns out that bestiality was legal in the state of Washington until just after Mr. Hands died. Did I mention that even though there's "nothing wrong with this" according to H, Happy Horseman, Coyote, and the others, that no one would stay at the hospital to answer any questions about why he was bleeding internally into his abdomen? Thought I should share.
Zoo tries really, really hard to make these people sympathetic, but the fact that you can hear these same kinds of arguments on "to catch a predator" is really telling. It's hard to feel sorry for these bastards when one of them promises it will happen again near the end of the film, all the while insisting that he's being persecuted. There's even an attempt to suggest that clearly the animals are consenting to this by Rush Limbaugh on one of his radio programs around the time this happened, but good old even Limbaugh can't make his case sound reasonable, let alone give a reason why they have a case.
I can't honestly recommend this movie to anyone, because you'll probably learn more about the story from following the news reports. Unless you really want to spend 75 minutes listening to forty to sixty year old men chastise you for not understanding their love for animals, or you're keen on seeing some quick shots of what may or may not be the video they shot of the event happening (something totally glossed over by the people involved) or a guy walking around naked and hugging horses, then Zoo is a waste of your time. The ludicrousness of it wears off pretty quickly, and you’re left with a nasty taste in your mouth, which is what happens when horseshit gets shoveled in for and hour and change (no pun intended, although there is never a specific mention of the zoophilics in the film eating actual horse shit).
2010 Thoughts: The Cap'n is pretty much sticking to that review. To properly contextualize Zoo, I'd heard the news reports about what happened in Washington state, found it to be morbidly amusing, and rented Zoo to get the scoop. The film is artfully made, and certainly has a hypnotic quality about it. At the same time, it's impossible to separate what it is these men are telling you from the reality of the situation, which becomes less amusing once you've seen Zoo.
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