Horse Girl

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🎙️ EPISODE 289: 07.30.2020 Horse Girl (Netflix, 2020) is a grower not a shower. You know what you're getting into from the second you see that Stephen King/Stranger Things credits font, but: Can you handle the ride? Horse Girl is a perplexing bit of filmmaking on a couple different levels. For starters, it almost seems to flip the typical–and in more recent years, highly common–format of 'genre film as allegory for [something else]'. The something else in this case being mental illness and a highly personal struggle in the wake of a mother's suicide. And by 'flip' I mean that it seems as if this story iw cover for what is an 'actually happening science-fiction' plot line (ie, all of the crazy shit IS NOT happening in her head). The movie is ambiguous about all this, don't get me wrong. It's meant to be interpreted in different ways. So while my assertion could be way off, I commend the film for creating a structure where that read works.

This direct-to-Netlfix Duplass Brothers production is the fourth feature from Jeff Baena, who previously collaborated with Alison Brie, Horse Girl's star and co-writer, on 2017's The Little Hours, most notable perhaps for being the thumbnail and trailer preview I've scrolled past the most on Netflix without clicking. Baena began his career as co-writer of the highly underrated David O. Russell existential comedy I Heart Huckabees, and those absurdist sensibilities come through here.

This film feels ripe for repeat viewing, as I found myself almost immediately thinking back to early moments and clues I might have missed. Any criticism that the film is TOO oblique might be valid as well; the final thirty minutes are packed with SO much STUFF that it almost feels like Mad Libs surrealism. Luckily, Brie is just a phenomenal actor and grounds it with her very human performance. I thought those ticking black aliens were real. Whether or not they were probably isn't the point.

It makes you consider the difference between 'regular' mental illness and the kookoo stuff like schiz and seriously messed up seemingly schiz-adjacent bipolar episodes you read about. And, to further my original hypothesis about the 'flip', what does that say about the aliens/cloning being real? well then she was just sad and lonely and how that can feel unstoppable and weird, especially from the vantage point of the other (your coworker at Great Threads, your doctor Ira from City Slickers, etc).

At its best, Horse Girl hits upon a Lynchian vibe, where it feels like the line between complete bullshit and deeply felt symbolism is blurry or nonexistent, and like that, in its own way, is what it's all about. In that sense, it felt like material for the world of an episodic TV show, where otherwise throwaway elements could be picked up again and dusted off down the road. There were certainly enough auxiliary characters and great actors who could have been flushed out more: Molly Shannon as her co-worker at the aforementioned Great Threads (a great fake store name, think Michael's or A.C. Moore type craft shop), Toby Huss as her horse's trainer, and Paul Reiser as her step-dad who only appears in a single scene.

Color theory is among the many thematic avenues Horse Girl explores, however tangentially if not shallowly. The film ends with a shot of the blue sky replaced by blue fabric. It's subtle and nicely done (the whole movie is visually great), but it made me wish there had been a little more care and/or time in getting to that metaphor, and others. Ultimately, this is the film's only flaw: it's a bit too ambitious to be great, but overall, still really enjoyable and you'll be looking for loose threads to pull on long after viewing. I definitely recommend it.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 288 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 290A ⫸

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