zoo

Lyrical and elliptical, Robinson Devor’s Zoo is honestly a film that has to be seen in order to be believed, both in subject matter and approach. Released by THINKFilm and featured at the Sundance Film Festival, SXSW Film Festival, and Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight, Zoo is a provocative documentary/fiction hybrid that is unafraid of plumbing the depths of a powerful taboo. In 2005, a middle-aged engineer died from a perforated colon under mysterious circumstances in a Seattle hospital. The ensuing investigation into the cause revealed a shocking secret; the engineer’s internal injuries resulted from sexual intercourse with a horse.

Unsurprisingly, a storm of media coverage and recriminations abounded as the engineer was discovered to have been a member of a secret group of so-called zoophiles who engaged in such acts on a regular basis. Devor’s film seeks to shed light on the incident itself but also use it as a starting point in delving into this unique, taboo subculture of “zoos”, which is what the members of this group refer to themselves as. Utilizing a stylized, dramatization aesthetic akin to that used by documentarian Errol Morris or Werner Herzog, Devor illustrates personal stories and incidents which led up to the fateful incident while having the actual participants provide a running narration and commentary. The film opens with a number of the “zoos” (individuals with codenames like ‘Coyote’ and ‘The Happy Horseman’) discussing the events that led each of them to the specific club that the victim, aka “Mr. Hands”, was involved with himself.