Horse Girl

Before we even lay eyes on social­ly awk­ward Sarah (Ali­son Brie), we’re intro­duced to her adorable gig­gles. We then fol­low her around the craft shop she works at, advis­ing ama­teur artists on which acrylic paint has just the right tex­ture to it.

Our pro­tag­o­nist seems to be con­tent with her some­what lone­ly life. She vis­its the beau­ti­ful horse that used to be hers and binges super­nat­ur­al crime show Pur­ga­to­ry (fea­tur­ing Matthew Gray Gubler and Robin Tun­ney in scene-steal­ing cameos). Despite this rom-com-style intro­duc­tion, Horse Girl isn’t a quirky, feel-good sto­ry. Its pas­tel premise becomes all the more unset­tling as we dig deep­er to uncov­er Sarah’s fam­i­ly his­to­ry of men­tal illness.

Her rou­tine is dis­rupt­ed when she takes one of those home DNA tests and starts hav­ing a series of weird dreams sug­gest­ing she might be expe­ri­enc­ing alien abduc­tion. What fol­lows is an unhealthy obses­sion for her own grand­moth­er, who suf­fered from schizophrenia.

Co-writ­ten with direc­tor Jeff Bae­na, this is Brie’s first ven­ture into screen­writ­ing. A soft thriller with incur­sions into sci-fi ter­ri­to­ry, the film focus­es on Sarah strug­gling to make sense of the world around her and come to terms with her trou­bled past.

Sarah needs help but doesn’t real­ly know how to ask for it, regard­less of the lov­ing atti­tude of her room­mate Nik­ki (Deb­by Ryan) and moth­er­ly cowork­er Joan (Mol­ly Shan­non). The film often high­lights this alien­ation by using walls as fram­ing devices to sep­a­rate the char­ac­ter from those who care for her, par­tic­u­lar­ly Dar­ren (John Reynolds).

Horse Girl has a lot on its feed­er – unprocessed trau­ma, off­beat humour, super­nat­ur­al ele­ments – but nev­er set­tles on a spe­cif­ic genre. Its strongest aspect is a sen­si­tive, non­judge­men­tal depic­tion of men­tal health issues, enhanced by a career-best per­for­mance from Brie, who revealed that she drew inspi­ra­tion from her own grandmother’s strug­gles with men­tal health.

Served by an eerie score, Brie is most com­pelling when Sarah goes dark; tak­ing Dar­ren on a dis­as­ter date involv­ing scis­sors as a weapon of choice. But Sarah’s sweet­est, most vul­ner­a­ble moments are also intrigu­ing. Her rela­tion­ship with dis­abled friend Heather (Mered­ith Hag­n­er), who fell off a horse in front of her when they were younger, reach­es its peak when Sarah imag­ines sleep­ing next to her.

Else­where, Sarah’s intense meet­ing with social work­er Ethan (Jay Duplass) dou­bles as a com­ment on men­tal health care in the US. But this proves to be a stand­out moment in what is oth­er­wise a rather clum­sy film, one which dwells on its dream­like aes­thet­ic to the detri­ment of its plot and core nar­ra­tive themes.