Zoo Review

Forbidden love affairs are a storytelling staple, but some across-the-tracks romances don’t win an audience’s sympathies as easily as others. Take the Seattle businessman who died from internal injuries after a jolly good rogering from his illicit partner: a horse. Zoo, an offbeat, slightly pretentious but still compelling documentary, uses staged recreations to tell this queasy tale of zoophilia sex parties. Shockingly, a number of the participants play themselves, but more surprising still is director Devor’s humanistic tone. Some may think he goes too far in normalising his subject, but Zoo is an admirable attempt to de-sensationalise a tragedy that, horribly for the victim’s family, became a national joke.