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.

Horse Girl A Primal Response/Horse A Girl

I had not seen the Horse Girl trailer when I wrote the Dolphin Girls blog. In my heart of hearts I never dreamed such a thing could exist. I thought we had too much respect for each other and too much fear of God to cross the thin line in fiction based on girlhood exceptions. I underestimated the human desire to open doors that should never have been opened.

I don’t think the Horse Girl trailer is bad, and I don’t think that Horse Girl is necessarily going to be a bad movie. I can’t think anything about it because as soon as I start watching the trailer my body goes into fight or flight mode: I break out into a cold sweat, my heart starts pounding, and my mouth tastes like metal. I can’t tell what response Horse Girl is supposed to provoke in me but that’s the one it does. Is Horse Girl a psychological thriller? Is the main character actually turning into a horse? Is the whole plot just the horse thing? Did she like horses before? Why are horses so scary?



Co--Star called me a d-list horse girl so I am uniquely qualified for this. Not only I am a horse girl I’m so much of a niche horse girl that I can’t even be marketed to the masses.




Let’s break down this trailer for a minute.

At first very normal film about an average awkward girl called Sarah struggling romantically and socially.Very much the foundation for a movie about a former horse girl rediscovering her passions and deciding she doesn’t care what people think. That’s not the direction they decided to go in. We’re in familiar territory when we get that shot of her looking at herself in her car mirror. Something isn’t right.




Aww she’s got a dead mom and ohhh she’s got a horse that she visits that’s cute. Maybe the mom died while riding/used to be an equestrian or loved horses too? I don’t think so.




Debbie Ryan is also here and her Disney Channel persona used to give me serious Horse Girl vibes. Look at her being a good friend and hooking up her roommate*. Maybe he’s into horses too?




But then her nose starts to bleed. And here’s the tone shift. Music cuts, the camera angle shifts and we get thrown off kilter as well. After this point the trailer is giving me more questions than I think the movie can answer. Clearly there are some links between inheritance and family (with a grandmother who looks eerily similar to Sarah, mental health and possible animal transformation. But how do the horses fit in? There are so many horses in this trailer but I don’t know what they mean. I don’t know what the dressmaking means either and I’m not sure which scares me more.




Wait no I do, it’s the horses.




This movie has an R rating and I don’t know what that means for my future. Don’t be mistaken I will be watching this movie. Nothing can stop me from watching this movie. I don’t know who I will be after watching this movie. So look forward in the future to seeing my review of Horse Girl by Jeff Baena


Is it this the thirteenth year but with horses? Is this cat people but with horses?



*someone get me one of those NetflixTM roommates so I can get my life back on track.