In 1979 on the banks of Bluff Creek in Northern California, two filmmakers, Bog Gilmin and Roger Paterson, shot some film of a mysterious creature in the woods. The footage is less than a minute long, but one frame – 352 – has since become the iconic symbol for the Sasquatch.

Since then the Sasquatch, AKA Bigfoot, has gone on to be a regular creature on film and TV, but one that has become somewhat of a bit player in the world of cinematic creatures.

It gets a chance to change that here with this feature that follows a year in the life of four of them.

Wondering the woods are four Sasquatch: a male (Jesse Eisenberg), female (Riley Keough), alpha male (Nathan Zellner) and a child (Christophe Zajac-Denek). We join them at the start of spring, as mating season begins, as they explore their wooded surroundings, avoiding many of its dangers as best they can.

David and Nathan Zellner have approached this film almost as a documentary, or more like a mockumentary, but without any kind of narration, which is a shame as it could have benefited from either Morgan Freeman or David Attenborough, as there is no dialogue whatsoever throughout its entirety.

The four characters are wearing what could easily be second-hand Wookie knock-offs, that look like they could have been created by a keen, amateur cosplayer. They are perfectly acceptable, but far from state of the art.

And then you have 90 minutes of grunts and groans, with a number of mild set pieces, as we work our way through the seasons.

It’s surprising that there are some actual actors involved, as it probably took them back to acting classes when they had to be a monkey for a session, but you have to question if they were even needed; there’s no doubt that a number of Disney performers, who pretend to be Mickey, Minnie and the rest of the gang for hours at a time, could easily have taken this role on and done just as good a job, especially as you don’t recognise anyone involved in the get up.

It’s the kind of premise that would have worked as a short, so it’s no surprise that David Zellner shot one in 2010, Sasquatch Birth Journal 2 with a perfectly acceptable running time of 5 minutes. But 90 minutes of this silly fantasy is 85 minutes too long.

As far as creating a narrative without dialogue goes, its satisfactory stuff, but it just doesn’t have the furry legs to pull it off for a full length feature, so if you were hoping for a Sasquatch revival, it’s highly unlikely to come from here.