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DIRECTED BY: Jeff Baena
FEATURING: Alison Brie, Molly Shannon, Matthew Gray Gubler
PLOT: A young woman with a family history of mental illness becomes paranoid that aliens are affecting her behavior.
COMMENTS: The title Horse Girl conjures up a specific archetype: not merely a girl who’s interested in horses (many girls are), but a girly-girl so relentlessly feminine that she makes people uncomfortable and ends up relating to steeds better than humans. Sarah (Brie) works at an arts and crafts shop selling beads and yarn, and won’t stop hanging out at the stable decorating Willow’s mane with her homemade lanyards, even though the owners hint that she’s not really welcome anymore. Other than a kind older lady at the shop (Shannon), she has no real friends, and spends most of her time watching the supernatural TV soap “Purgatory.” Her roommate tries setting her up with a friend-of-a-friend who’s on the rebound from a failed relationship. But Sarah’s social awkwardness takes a turn for the worse after she starts having dreams about a glowing ramp hanging over the ocean and a white-on-white room where she sees sleeping people whom she kind of recognizes…
What are we to think of a character who asks her ear nose and throat doctor, “Is there a test to see if I’m a clone?” Sarah has proto-schizophrenic fantasies about alien abductions and time travel, but the script never offers serious evidence that her theories are more than the ravings of a madwoman. Rather than suspecting and hoping (as we do with Donnie Darko) that there might be an alternate, plausible, high-stakes sci-fi explanation for our protagonist’s inner turmoil, we’re left watching a character’s sad decline into madness. Sarah’s total psychotic break happens abruptly, and the last act of the film is essentially a long hallucination broken up by a few conversations with her caseworker. The scenes are weird, yes, but we never get the psychological depth in her backstory that would make her delusions meaningful. We aren’t even explicitly told why she’s so attached to her horse—it’s left to us to put two and two together. Without a close emotional connection to Sarah, and without a narrative investment in her crazy clone theory, we can’t identify with her; we’re left to pity the poor horse girl rather than empathize with her. We watch Brie move through glowing white rooms; we watch her wrap herself (and her horse) in a homemade anti-alien suit. But it’s a depiction of madness rather than a submersion in madness. Despite its best efforts, Horse Girl keeps us on the outside of Sarah’s head, looking in.
Brie is very good in the role, socially stunted during the first half and dazed and terrified when her psychic dam breaks. Horse Girl is clearly a passion project for her (she co-wrote the script, basing Sarah on her own personal history, since Brie’s grandmother was a paranoid schizophrenic). This makes it all the more tragic that, despite her fervent portrayal, the story isn’t as gripping as it might have been.
Horse Girl comes with a tiny bit of controversy. The film has been accused of ripping off plot elements and story beats, and even lifting entire shots, from an earlier low-budget indie: 2017’s The God Inside My Ear. 366 Weird Movies is neutral on the question.
Horse Girl is currently a Netflix exclusive movie.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
RE: “controversy”: The one Reddit comment from that DailyDot post nailed it: “I could make this video for any two vaguely art-house-y indie movies.” That’s exactly what I was talking about when I said TGIME was derivative.
One more movie like this and somebody will write and release as open source the AI algorithm that can generate infinite Vague Art House Indie Movie scripts. Named VAHIM.
You could make these things in a blender. They’re as individual and as possessed of personality as the framed prints on the wall at different fast food outlets. Andy Warhol warned us this day was coming. He tried to show you the future of VAHIMs in 16-panel renderings of the same soup can with different color palettes.
At least this one has Allison Brie, though she is so much better than this I’m pretty sure she’s blowing off steam between gigs.