Netflix’s “Horse Girl” is a film focusing on the life of a young woman named Sarah. She lives with her roommate and works in a craft store. She’s a little socially awkward and spends a good chunk of her time visiting her childhood horse or watching her favorite sci-fi show. Overall it seems as if her life is fairly normal, although a bit introverted. However, after we get to know Sarah a little better we begin to see that her life isn’t quite as normal as we had believed. I’ll be discussing the film as well as giving my final thoughts on whether or not “Horse Girl” is a yay or neigh.
The first hint that we get something might really be off about Sarah is when her roommate’s boyfriend finds her in the kitchen sleepwalking. While this isn’t particularly concerning, it is the start of something bigger. Her sleepwalking starts to get a little more hard to handle as she begins to have very vivid dreams where she sees people who begin to pop up in her real life. Sarah kind of writes this off until she just can’t keep it to herself anymore.
She wakes up somewhere she didn’t go to sleep and her car is gone. It turned out that her car had been left in the middle of the road and her stepfather ended up coming to help her get it from the tow yard. During her visit with her stepdad, she ends up asking about her mother and grandmother who both had problems with their mental health. She starts to wonder if the same things are happening to her but she continues to brush it off.
Finally, she begins to deteriorate even more and ends up believing that she’s a clone of her grandmother and has been sent by aliens to be an informant. Her dreams lead her to try and figure out who else is a clone and eventually she has such a bad breakdown that she goes to a mental hospital. After being released she goes back to her life but ends up going into the woods with her childhood horse and is seemingly abducted by aliens.
Overall I found the film to be interesting, it left you questioning whether or not she was actually right or just crazy. It addressed the ways that mental illnesses can really take over people’s lives. When you see someone and their actions portray them as crazy, you don’t really know how real what they’re going through can be to them. The feel of the movie, especially the way the ending went down, reminded me a little of an A24 film like “Midsommar” or “Hereditary”. I don’t think it was particularly groundbreaking but I did think it was pretty good in general.