Zoo, or What the hell is wrong with people?

What the hell is wrong with people? Seriously. That’s all I could think of while watching Zoo, a documentary about zoophiles and particularly about one zoophile who died after being philed by a zoo, specifically a horse. Again, I have to say, what the 3871 is wrong with people?

I understand curiosity. Curiosity is why I didn’t flinch when my friend Critical Darling handed this film over for my perusal. I knew what I was in for, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to go ahead and see exactly what I was in for. Everyone’s just a little bit curious. Fortunately, my imagination is satisfied by simply sitting through Zoo. Others, are not so fortunate in their inquisitiveness.

Director Robinson Devor’s technique is reminiscent of crappy mysterious alien autopsy documentaries. It begins with some mysterious lights in the darkness and some eerie music and proceeds with voiceovers telling cryptic anecdotes while shadowy reenactments are presented. If I hadn’t known this was a film about an incident of bestiality I would have thought this was a film about Bigfoot, The Bermuda Triangle and Hangar 18. It makes Equus seem like an installment of Schoolhouse Rock and frankly it’s annoying. It’s an annoying style for any documentary, but it’s much more understandable for the kind of topics that were covered by the creepy In Search Of…series that haunted my childhood. I’m not saying that the story of a man being humped to death by a horse should be filmed in bright colors with a John Philip Sousa soundtrack but—well, maybe I am saying that. What would be wrong with that? Nothing.

Devor’s film has no main narration, so the story comes out in mysterious bits and pieces through the lengthy personal narratives of various zoophiles and other characters involved in the incident. It takes several minutes before someone mentions something about “being zoo” which brings up another point of annoyance—A zoo is a park where animals are kept and exhibited to the public. It’s a violation of language to turn it into an adjective of identity. “I am zoo” isn’t just disturbing as a thought, it’s also just a dumb distortion of language. The least these cowfuckers could do would be to have enough of a sense of humor to refer to themselves as “zooish.” That would at least bring some humor to it. But no, “zoo” is a marker of identity. Next thing you know the “zoos” will want to have a Zoo Pride Parade. From a political standpoint, Zoo is the first piece of evidence I’ve ever seen that a conservative could point to as proving a point about the excesses of liberal identity culture and where it can go. Apparently the end product of excessive tolerance is to end up in a farm in Washington State being reared by a horse.

Robinson Devor may be clever in not turning Zoo into sensational yellow journalism, but the moral relativism of the film tends to lean toward excessive sympathy for the “zoos.” It’s certainly thought-provoking, but it’s also infuriating. Morals and ethics aren’t bad things. Having sex with animals is not a good thing. People who do it are not normal. This is not civilized behavior. It’s not even acceptably barbaric behavior. I have to wonder if Robinson Devor would consider doing a documentary about genocide from the point of view of the perpetrators and come out this sympathetic. How many howls of protest would that get at Sundance?

It takes eons before anyone in Zoo mentions “bestiality” and several more eons before the facts of the case of “Mr. Hands” come out—a man died from internal injuries sustained while being mounted by a horse. The words “perforation” “colon” and “horse” should never appear together in a sentence, much less on a death certificate. But while I have to agree with Cop #1 when he says that this is ultimately about the death of a human being and, thus, inherently a personal tragedy for that person and his loved ones I can’t help but add that this was a preventable death and that’s the point that the film seems to miss. Devor lets the “zoos” defend themselves and their behavior to such an extent that we can be tempted to forget that “Mr. Hands” would never have suffered this “tragedy” if he didn’t have the desire to be ridden by a horse.

I suppose there’s some benefit to hearing the zoophiles defending themselves and letting the audience form their own responses. And I suppose the only thing worse than Zoo would be to see the kind of exploitative crappy way a TV tabloid show or the Zoological History Channel would come up with to tell this story, but that doesn’t change the fact that Zoo is just an annoying film about a distasteful subject.

In the end the zoos don’t seem to realize that there’s a difference between love between people and love for other creatures—and that the desire to have a sexual relationship with a creature precisely because of their inability to communicate or complicate things with human emotions and relationship issues is not merely a different kind of the same love that people share, but a form of psychosis. If the makers of Zoo agree that zoophilly is a form of psychosis and not okay they sure as heck don’t show it.

Though this film has very little that can visually disgust or disturb viewers—there is one scene where reenactors are watching a tape of the “incident” but it looks blurry and sounds somewhat disgusting—this is not a film for people who are squeamish. That’s not to say that it IS a film for anyone. It may be a great conversation piece, but who the heck wants to get that conversation rolling.

Zoo, dir. Robinson Devor, is fortunately still unavailable on home video.