Horse Girl, A Review

Content warning notice for suicide and spoilers for the film.


Horse Girl, what do I say about Horse Girl? The R Rating scared me so much. But honestly, I say it was alright. I knew from the get go it couldn’t hold up to the sheer feral energy of the trailer, let alone the feral energy of the title. The beginning is a little weak. Details about the main character’s life are a little vague or poorly explained. Still we get a good sense of the characters, the nerdy and shy main, her cooler but nice roommate, the kind of douchebag roommates bf, the also nerdy bf’s roommate, the motherly coworker. The Netflix Staples*. Sara’s a nerd whose obsession with a paranormal TV show (starring Matthew Gray Gubler, my dude) and crafts are a coping mechanism she develops after her mother’s tragic suicide. She’s just trying find herself and love at the same time.After the set up, the movie quickly shifts to a psychological horror where Sara has to figure out if the bizarre events happening are real or in her head. Sara has visions while she sleeps, she sleepwalks, and she keeps losing time. And none of it has anything to do with horses.

The movie picks up a lot in the second half. It might have been a little bit of the time sunk cost but I was getting into it. The film maintains the level of tension of suspense throughout the rising action and Alison Brie is a talented enough actress to manage Sara’s increasing strangeness without alienating the audience. While there were no real standout side characters the film is ultimately Sara’s story, and it is a compelling story. We follow Sara through the conspiracy theories and her devolving mental state. The plot threads culminate into a believable story. It’s an intriguing conspiracy theory that lost me at some points but carried me to the end. And in the end in it turns out the conspiracy really was real. Aliens have been abducting Sara and they carry her away one last time. But still nothing to do with horses.

There is a horse in the movie and a subplot related to the horse. Sara used to own a horse named Willow and has a best friend called Heather who she used to ride horses with. Heather suffers a traumatic accident in their youth while riding that leaves her brain damaged. Losing her horse may also be vaguely connected to her mother to committed suicide not too sure. Sara clearly has a deep emotional connection to her horse, she even brings Willow with her when she allows the aliens to abduct her again at the end of the film. But really the horse is just extra stuff in the film. We don’t even get an explanation for why she sold Willow or how long it’s been since she owned Willow. The horse in Horse Girl is just an extra thing that takes space away from what could have been used for story telling elsewhere.

*this movie isn’t a Netflix original; Netflix bought the distribution rights. Still it seems like Netflix has a type.