Horse Girl

Dammit, I wanted to like this movie. Alison Brie’s performance is fantastic. The cinematography is excellent. The score is both soothing and creepy. But this movie just doesn’t know what it wants to do or be. It tries to document the mental breakdown of a woman, but it never gives a reason WHY her sanity is falling apart. And the speed at which is does is grossly unrealistic, almost insultingly so. And for all the depths it plumbs of mental illness, it doesn’t have anything to say about it. Here, the deterioration of sanity is a plot device. The fuel on which the engine of this movie runs, nay, DEPENDS ON. Because without it, Alison Brie’s Sarah is just a socially awkward introvert. Nothing special. It needs her to be crazy for us to be invested. But at no point does it give the viewer reason to be invested. It isn’t simply enough to start losing her mind. She has to believe in a kooky conspiracy theory involving time travel, aliens and cloning. She tells this to people — dates, doctors, coworkers — without a shred of perception that other people might think she’s nuts. And there’s no sympathy found from her roommate — in fact, she’s the most perplexing character. Why does this professional, outgoing woman have a roommate that’s a couple cats away from being a lonely shut-in? There is no narrative logic in their pairing. And the biggest sin is that, whether by design or not, the narrative is fragmented. It’s not hard to follow, it’s just sloppily put together and lacking cohesion. Sarah’s working at a store ... now she’s dreaming ... now she’s at a stable, harassing a young rider ... now she’s visiting a young woman that is obviously crippled, and we get no introduction and never see her again ... it’s sloppy and disjointed. If it’s meant to give us a feeling of what she’s feeling like, it fails, because the movie never gives Sarah reason to start losing her mind. And if it isn’t intentional, then it’s just lousy storytelling. Finally, the ending is the worst kind of ambiguous bullshit you’ll ever face in a movie. It has no interest in making you think or spurring conversation. It’s a trick, a narrative rug pull, a gotcha that’s as clever as a kick in the crotch. You’ll feel confusion, then anger, then confusger, because you won’t be sure WHAT to be mad at, just that being mad seems right. It’s a baffling, frustrating mess that inverts the whole movie, like the “it was all a dream” ending, but in reverse, done just because they could.