If you read the reviews of this "movie" from the highly respected "critics" you may be shocked (to say the least) to see the word "beautiful" in nearly every one. It gets extremely high marks for demonstrating that "love is blind" and that "you can't help who you fall in love with".It does a great job of "humanizing" animal rapists (sorry) "extreme horse enthusiasts" in a way that you will not only relate to them, but probably even want to drink a beer with them. You may even want to take Mr. Ed or My Friend Flicka out for a spin afterwards. You know, with the "good 'ol boys"."Zoo" shows how society "bullies" them and how badly they are discriminated against for their love of raping animals. They are basically just "tortured souls" who are "misunderstood". Mister Hands really DID feel "love" for his horse (especially when he was really, REALLY drunk). I'm not kidding. Not at all...When "Mr. Hands" dies due to his colon being popped like a cheap water balloon by a 4 foot long horse wiener, many people are saddened at the great "loss" to the world. "Mr. Hands" was the kind of guy you could pound beers (and other stuff) with and he was "nice". Sure, he was a horse rapist but nobody is perfect... right? In other words, the film depicts him and his animal raping friends as completely normal, good people who just happen to rape animals as a hobby. Who are you to judge!? "Zoo", along with the rave reviews that it received, gave me the last, sold, concrete pieces of evidence that I needed to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, that most bleeding hearts have completely lost their minds. It is the best known example of how some people can take "tolerance" way, WAY to far. To the point where they use the term "tolerance" as an excuse for, I dunno, RAPING HORSES.This film also gave me a firm grasp on just how feeble minded most people are. If a group of animal rapists get together to make a propaganda piece about how "you shouldn't judge them", and RUBES ACTUALLY GO FOR IT, that means that you can MAKE A FILM THAT WILL JUSTIFY ANYTHING.So what was the REAL lesson being taught to us in this "movie"? The sad, disturbing, horrifying and completely haunting thing about this "movie" is that I can already see where this is all going... With movies like "Zoo" and "heroes" like Michael Jackson and Pete Townsend "humanized"... to god-like proportions, It doesn't take a genius to figure it out.I can already see it happening within my lifetime and it makes me want to vomit my guts out just thinking about it. Living in a world where your are forced to "tolerate" their "alternative lifestyle". A world where every T.V. show and movie has a blatant "public service message" inserted in the middle that urges you to "respect the feelings" of child and animal rapists and that their behavior is "perfectly normal".A few decades ago, a movie like "Zoo" would have been completely inconceivable. Just imagine what you and your kids will be witnessing in a few more decades? God, I hope that I don't live long enough to witness it...

The narrative, from the people's point of view was very touching. The scenery and pictures were beautiful, and often made you forget about the grimness of this freak accident. I did not watch the last 20 minutes or so, because i got interrupted, and did not feel like resume watching this documentary, because of how understated the whole matter seemed to be. I would have liked some more factual things, for it to work as a proper documentary, since i am more used to the "Zeitgeist" part of the documentary-genre. Another thing i sort of missed in this movie, was some guiding - either by some sort of objective narrator or by some more relevant pictures, rather than pictures of woods and a guy on a greyhound bus. However, I really liked this movie for being so visually "clean" and for sticking to the relevant people and places. Another thing that i really liked, was the convincing acting of the "stock-footage" actors, so overall a well-done movie. 5/10 Best Intentions - Emma

Based on the case of a Boeing employee who died from a perforated colon while being anally penetrated by a horse in Enumclaw, a town in rural Washington state, "Zoo" (the term is short for zoophilia, the sexual love of animals) is a brave attempt to address a highly controversial and polarising issue in a dispassionate way that neither condemns nor sympathises with the people involved in bestiality. The film recreates the events leading up to the man's death and its aftermath in a way that's part documentary / part drama with re-enactments of scenes and emphasising a soft, dream-like mood with delicately muted, wafting music. Director Devor uses four narrators, talking to an unseen listener, to retell the events from the point of view of the people who knew the man, referred to in the film as "Mr Hands", and this approach thrusts (um) the viewer right into the twilight world of zoophiles: how they found each other through Internet contacts, how they organised their tryst and their reactions when the man was injured and when their secret activities became known to the outside world.The film has the air of a noir mystery: the majority of scenes are filmed in shadow, at night or in dark colours with blue being predominant. The story unfolds slowly and elliptically and anyone who is unaware in advance as to what the film is about may be puzzled at the indirect way "Zoo" tiptoes around the subject until near half-way when a news report drops its headline in deadpan style. The pace is very steady, perhaps too steady and slow, and the film often dwells on several still camera shots which look deliberately staged as if for static display purposes. Close-ups and landscapes often look very abstract with washes of blue across a background; an orchard looks like a misty fairyland beneath a light coating of rain. The mood is even and quite blank until a scene in which police investigators viewing a DVD recording appears; the police react with horror and shock watching the act of buggery and only then do viewers feel something creepy crawl up their spines.For all its delicacy, "Zoo" gives the impression of something much bigger than its subject matter struggling to make itself seen and heard: the zoophiles give the impression of wanting companionship, a sense of belonging, a need to share something special that gives meaning to their lives, and thinking they have found it. They seek a utopia in which everyone is equal and no-one is judged by how much money s/he earns or how educated s/he is. The places in rural Washington where many of them live look impoverished and some zoophiles may well be drifters or marginalised people barely managing to make a living and survive. (Difficult to tell as many scenes are recreations of actual events with actors playing the zoophiles.) If the film had directly addressed the need of the zoophiles for meaning, for companionship, it might have been able to gain more co-operation from the people involved; as it is, the level of co-operation it got is very restricted. The dead man's family refused to be interviewed for the film which is a pity as the wife and child might have presented him as more well-rounded than he appears in "Zoo".The film also suffers from subjectivity and could have done with a more objective view of its subject. Interviews with psychologists and psychiatrists on zoophilia and perhaps other conditions such as lycanthropy (identifying oneself as an animal rather than as a human) might have shed light on why some people are sexually attracted to animals and to some kinds of animals in particular. The goals of the project would still be met: the issue would not be sensationalised and viewers might come away with a greater understanding of zoophilia and other bizarre philias. Instead the film can only concentrate on the horse-trainer, Jenny Edwards, who took charge of the horses after the incident became public: she admits that after having followed the case in its detail and ordering one of the horses gelded, that she's "on the edge" of understanding the zoophiles' obsession. It appears also that the director and film-crew were as much in the dark as Edwards was while making the film; even after its completion, the film-makers still were scratching their heads trying to make sense of what they'd done. Not a good portent for a film.Yes, zoophilia is a difficult subject to talk about, let alone film, without making it look disgusting, degraded or ridiculous and pathetic. "Zoo" tries hard not to take one side or the other but with a subject like this, the attempt to be "balanced" is a tough act indeed to pull off. Some viewers will be irate that the film advocates no position at all, as if it's the film-makers' duty to tell them what they must believe. I think though that to achieve the "balance" that "Zoo" strives for, the film-makers should have pulled back from their subjects and taken a more generalised view of the issue of zoophilia; the police officers, the courts, psychologists and medical who dealt with the dead man and his friends should have been consulted for their opinions about zoophilia.

I simply couldn't believe how self-indulgent others could be.I am speaking of the zoophiles, of course, but mostly the stupidly pretentious film maker. A contrived Philip Glass-ish score and the faux moodiness showed me this director fancies his creation as the next Koyaanisqatsi. It is hysterically terrible, in that regard, absolutely from start to finish.Folks, this movie is about a group of people who love their animals more than you love yours. Yep. More than you.These people are hard-core liberals. Peacenik and conspiracy radio and what passes for leftist 'intellectual' fun abounds in this silly brooding homosexual real-life fantasy.You see, the guy that gets dead from receiving more love from his animal than you have from yours was an employee at Boeing with a Top-Secret clearance. He saw the light, though, and became a treasonous, leftist, homosexual zoophile. He and his band of merry animal lovers shared EVERYTHING with each other. It is clear from the dialogue that the now-departed has left his leftist, zoophile buddies with info that no one should have. What a guy! The long, backlit overblown shadowy film work and the crap Phil Glass imitation is *absolutely* over-the-top. Fake 'Heavy-ness' saturates every scene.The despised female that ultimately captures the killer horse immediately castrates him, but then in laboriously hilarious dialogue explains to the viewer her conversion to see the zoophile's side of the matter. Now, she probably has nightmares that she gelded that stallion because, at bottom, she deprived another ?man? from receiving more 'horse love' than you ever will!Well, since there's a leftist traitor to his country that gets it in the end, I almost raised the score to 2 stars... Nah.