Horse Girl

“My mom used to say that I have an overactive imagination.”

Filmology Rating: 2.5 out of 4

Horse Girl is a Netflix film produced by the Duplass brothers who made one my favorite films of last year, 'Paddleton.' 'Horse Girl' was written by Jeff Baena and Alison Brie and was directed by Baena, starring Brie.

Sarah, a socially isolated woman with a fondness for arts and crafts, horses, and supernatural crime shows finds her increasingly lucid dreams trickling into her life. 'Horse Girl' is quite the ambitious film. The first half is very streamlined and it's the usual "shy girl comes into her own" story. If that was the entire film, it would probably be all right and that's due to a very committing performance from Alison Brie. However, about halfway in, the film takes a ninety degree turn and just keeps going into odd-ball territory while keeping a sense of dark humor throughout. It's like getting onto the teacups ride at Disney and it turns into Space Mountain.

The second half becomes incredibly immersive and just weird. Alison Brie's character begins to question her own sanity and we the audience do as well by questioning whether or not she's imagining everything or not. Now, that's all I'll say because it's worth watching with no information ahead of time.

The last act or so really does fall apart because the film dives so deep into metaphor that it raises more questions than it bothers to answer, which leads to a very confusing ending that doesn't conclude the narrative. It's like being served sandwich ingredients at a restaurant and you're responsible for physically making the sandwich. I will admit that the film is fun to think about though because of the great visuals and how utterly scattershot the ending itself is.

Allison Brie really commits in this film, though. Without her, this film would probably fall flat on its face for what it's striving to do, but Brie is just such a great screen presence that she keeps you engaged with a narrative that isn't that well told.

It takes a very skilled filmmaker to pull of experimental and this film falls short of its ambitions, but that's okay because they really swung for the fences. I'd rather see a film that does that and fails than another 'Fast and Furious' movie.

Rating: Rent It

-Nolan