Film

Horse Girl

Name: Horse Girl
Genre: Drama
Released: 2020
Cast: Alison Brie, Debby Ryan, John Reynolds, Molly Shannon, John Ortiz

Drama
Slow-burning

Horse Girl is a slippery descent into unreliable consciousness, where reality and delusion blur until you stop trusting which is which. Alison Brie plays Sarah, isolated and obsessive, as her nightly fever dreams—aliens, conspiracies, past lives—begin bleeding into waking hours. It's part psychological thriller, part cosmic horror, all unsettling. For viewers who love being deliberately disoriented.

TMDb rating

2.8

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like a character study that stays close to one lonely woman's inner weather, where small domestic details and a slow drift toward uncertainty carry more weight than plot.

Skip it if you want clear stakes and a steady footing under every scene; its blurring edges can feel slippery, and its quiet, meandering pace may test your patience.

What it asks of you: Patience with silence and repetition: unhurried scenes of routine, a lean 103 minutes, and attention to small tells rather than big reveals.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Mulholland Drive2001

Naomi Watts in another story where dreams, identity and Hollywood mythology twist together into something genuinely vertiginous. A masterclass in unreliable narration that rewards the discomfort.

But It's long, deliberately confusing, and the first half plays differently once you know what's coming—some find that frustrating rather than brilliant.

The Machinist2004

Christian Bale's skeletal presence as a man losing his grip on reality and his own history. A film that makes paranoia contagious; you spiral with the protagonist.

But It's bleak and repetitive by design, watching someone deteriorate without relief or hope can feel like punishment rather than art.

Black Swan2010

Natalie Portman consumed by her role until you can't separate performance from psychosis. Opera, ambition, and body horror merge into something hypnotic and queasy.

But The final act abandons subtlety. If you prefer your psychological horror understated, this will feel overwrought.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Horse Girl

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Secret of Kells2009

Both trap you inside an obsessive character's perspective—Sarah loses reality to supernatural intrusion; the boy in Kells is progressively consumed by the magical and the beautiful until you can't tell what's real anymore.

An Irish animated fantasy with haunting, detailed hand-drawn art. A boy in a monastery surrounded by magic and threat; gorgeously strange and never quite what you expect it to be.

But It's a fairy tale for adults, not children—oblique and steeped in Celtic mythology that doesn't explain itself.

Hereditary2018

Toni Collette's unraveling against cosmic dread that creeps in sideways. It blends family trauma with genuine horror in ways that feel inescapable.

But It's relentlessly bleak and moves toward genuine grotesquerie. Catharsis is not on offer.

A Tale of Two Sisters2003

A South Korean ghost story that's really about trauma, memory, and how we reconstruct reality after injury. Hypnotic visuals and a devastating final twist.

But The narrative structure is deliberately opaque and won't clarify itself. Some find this poetic; others just feel lost.

Goodnight Mommy2015

An Austrian horror film where a mother returns from surgery altered and wrong. Body horror and child perspective combine into something deeply unsettling and strange.

But It's bleak in ways that don't redeem themselves and contains disturbing imagery of harm. Not a fun watch.

The Wailing2016

A South Korean folk horror film where mystery deepens instead of resolving. Paranoia, faith, and ambiguity layer until you can't trust anyone—including the film itself.

But It's nearly three hours and refuses to answer its central questions. The ending frustrates people who want certainty.

Videodrome1983

Cronenberg's fever dream about a man whose reality fragmentates through video. Visceral body horror and digital disintegration; prescient about media consumption's psychological cost.

But It's deliberately grotesque and the narrative dissolves into abstraction. If you need plot coherence, this will feel like a migraine.

Rosemary's Baby1968

Mia Farrow's paranoia in a Manhattan apartment where you never know if she's been betrayed or broken. Slow-burn unease and the question of whose mind to trust.

But It's slow by modern standards and the horror is psychological rather than visual. Patience is required.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle2019

Like Horse Girl, it's about a woman's reality—her version of events, her justifications, her isolation—slowly revealed to be stranger than anyone outside can understand. Both ask: whose unreliability are we?

Taissa Farmiga as a recluse whose isolation is both refuge and trap, living with her sister in a house the village hates. Claustrophobic, precise, and morally slippery.

But Almost nothing happens in plot terms. It moves at the pace of paranoia and observation, which reads as tedious if you need conventional narrative momentum.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle poster

Tusk2014

Both use obsession and isolation as gateways to the surreal. Sarah's dreams become her waking life; the kidnapped man's body becomes something other. Each film asks: how far will isolation and obsession take you from recognizable reality?

Kevin Smith's body horror film: a man kidnapped by an eccentric surgeon who wants to turn him into a walrus. Utterly bizarre, grotesque, and weirdly ambitious in its commitment to the premise.

But It's repellent, conceptually unhinged, and trades in visceral discomfort without redemptive narrative arc. It's a provocation first, entertainment second.