Featured Audience Ratings

• Bob S

  
  yeah, i watched zoo

• Luke B

  
  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… More
  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.

• Stella D

  
  you probably don't want to watch this. it's well made but extremely disturbing. this is animal abuse no matter what these freaks may claim; they are no better than rapists and child molesters; sick

• El Hombre I

  
  Fairly done, heartfelt, unique documentary concerning a man who was f***** to death by a horse

• William D

  
  [size=3][color=black]Zoo is one of the worst movies of the year, but it has material that is among the most interesting of the year. Dichotomies like that don't come around very often! It's really too bad that this material didn't get into the hands of a more talented… More
  [size=3][color=black]Zoo is one of the worst movies of the year, but it has material that is among the most interesting of the year. Dichotomies like that don't come around very often! It's really too bad that this material didn't get into the hands of a more talented filmmaker.[/color][/size] [size=3][/size] [img]http://www.thedocumentaryblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/Zoo.jpg[/img] [size=3][color=black]The film centers on an actual event that took place in Washington State not too long ago. Apparently it got a lot of press, but I have to admit, I never heard about it. A man bled to death from internal injuries that he didn't even know he had, after he'd received anal intercourse from a stallion.[/color][/size] [size=3][color=black]They don't dramatize the sex act. There's only a two-second shot from a homemade video that clearly shows a horse with its front legs up on a fence and its back legs on the ground. The horse is penetrating a man who is standing up without any pants on. The horse is pushing its penis in and out like any other species would.[/color][/size] [size=3][color=black]The actual sex act is not what interests the filmmaker, however. He was curious to find out what happened at the farm that led to such a thing. Who were these people that were with the man that night? What did the owner of the horses think of this? And what would compel a man to seek a sexual experience with a horse? etc.[/color][/size] [size=3][color=black]What results is something of an anthropological study of zoophiles, people who have a deep affinity with non-human animals and occasionally seek to have sexual experiences with them. The problem is that the filmmaker doesn't really learn anything significant. Or he's too dim-witted to find anything interesting.[/color][/size] [size=3][color=black]So what we're left with is long passages about how "zoos" (they do call themselves that) find each other on the Internet. You would not believe the long, banal sequences about the Internet "opening up imaginations," with long shots of radio transmitting towers! This movie gives new meaning to the word banal.[/color][/size] [size=3][color=black]Then after the long Internet chapter, we get the farm chapter. Languid images of men with first-grade educations hanging out on a farm together. Once the filmmaker learned about the lifestyle of the men who owned the farm, they talked these men into re-enacting their typical goings-on. So there are pathetically staged sequences where toothless grizzly men have parties together and go for long walks. Soporific in the extreme.[/color][/size] [size=3][color=black]One of the men in the loose network of friends was not toothless. He was upper middle class, well-educated and urbane. He found this network of men and had begun visiting the farm on occasion. He is the one who died. It wasn't clear if this was his first intercourse experience with a horse, or if he was an expert. But again, the film is not that interested in the details of that night.[/color][/size] [size=3][color=black]Another character that emerges is the woman who was called to the farm the next day to remove the animals. All the animals were taken. She gives her narration in a set of somber voice-overs, and she also reveals nothing.[/color][/size] [size=3][color=black]It's amazing to me that all the people involved in this unusual case really have nothing of value to say. People in that area of the country apparently have inner lives similar to animals. Light's on, but nobody's home.[/color][/size] [size=3][color=black]Well, there was one passage that I found intriguing. A man was saying in voice-over that you can't talk to animals about Tolstoy, or the differences between Monet and Picasso. That kind of thing doesn't exist in their world. Their world is a simpler place. And for just an instant you can be taken to that place, he said. I did find that idea exciting. Getting a glimpse of what it must feel like to be a non-human animal.[/color][/size] [size=3]I found one more interesting thing, although it's never mentioned in the film. None of the men involved appear to be gay. They appear to be straight men who yearn to be penetrated by animals. One man even had a plaster cast of a horse's penis in his home, and he knew the horse. That was a penis he had, I suppose, fallen in love with. Yet they're not gay, in our conventional use of the word. [/size] [size=3]Perhaps a deeper, more exciting filmmaker would have dug into themes such as that. I almost saw glimpses of a new kind of sexual orientation.[/size]

• Walter M

  
  [font=Century Gothic]"Zoo" is a provocative documentary about an unnamed engineer(here known as Mr. Hands") who died after a sexual act with a horse. He was part of a group of otherwise lonely men who had met over the internet where they talked about their shared… More
  [font=Century Gothic]"Zoo" is a provocative documentary about an unnamed engineer(here known as Mr. Hands") who died after a sexual act with a horse. He was part of a group of otherwise lonely men who had met over the internet where they talked about their shared obsession in zoophilia which is a sexual attraction to other species.(Mr. Hands had the closest to a normal life, being divorced with a child.) While using mostly recreations, the documentary successfully defuses the sensationalistic aspects of the story with an elliptical approach that relies not only on the testimony from an animal rescue worker who was on the scene afterward but also from three pseudonymous participants.(That having been said. Was it absolutely necessary to show how a horse is gelded?) The exquisite cinematography perfectly captures the shadow world that these men inhabit. [/font]

• Daniel P

  
  A good music score, photography and unusual film stock (kinda like early 80's sexploitation films) are some good points in an otherwise surprisingly dull 'insight' into the life of a man who died after being fucked by a horse. <i>Zoo</i> should surely be… More
  A good music score, photography and unusual film stock (kinda like early 80's sexploitation films) are some good points in an otherwise surprisingly dull 'insight' into the life of a man who died after being fucked by a horse. <i>Zoo</i> should surely be horrific and/or illuminating watching but its structured in such a dreary way that, more often than not, it's just boring. Robinson Devor should be applauded for tackling one of the remaining taboos (i.e. bestiality), but unfortunately he seems too concerned with trying not to disgust, and the voices heard throughout the film too often say things in as vague a way as possible.

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