Horse Girl (Netflix) is a surreal, truly bizarre and rather sad film about Sarah (Alison Brie), a former professional horsewoman, a downright awkward young girl whose main job is to groom her beloved horse, watch supernatural crime dramas, and sell fabric in a specialty shop.
Features of the Horse Girl plot
Lonely in every sense (Sarah has no real friends, family and boyfriend except for a friendly colleague), she resembles a typical rom-com heroine, in which a gray mouse pulls off her glasses and turns into a “beautiful swan”. Well, further down the script: a guy, recognition of friends, popularity. But this is not what happens to Sarah in Horse Girl , although in the first 15-20 minutes of the film, as planned by director Jeff Baen , the audience envisions just such a scenario.
Interpretation of the “Rider” plot
The plot of the film is like a decoy: while its title and first half indicate that it is a classic quirky indie romance, about halfway through the story it becomes clear that Horse Girl is much deeper and not at all what it first appears.
Due to a series of unexplained events, Sarah begins to believe that she is in fact a clone of her dead grandmother (later, her own grandmother), and that she is regularly abducted by aliens. The girl begins to have strange dreams and plunges headlong into her own experiences. From a cheerful, sweet and shy heroine, she turns into an insane, but still eager for help woman. She is completely sincere in her feelings, which, unfortunately, do not find a response in society.
The hidden meaning of Horse Girl
If we discard the storyline with aliens, which we will discuss below, and imagine that they were not there, the heroine’s nervous breakdown, no matter how sad it sounds, is still logical. The “rider” is undoubtedly an exaggerated, but very vivid example of how difficult it is to live “outside of society” hoping for friendship and understanding of people who do not care about you.
From the very first minutes, we understand that Sarah is lonely, but the girl’s positive attitude does not allow her to give up. She is infinitely polite and kind, knows how to keep the conversation going and is even interested in pop culture. But what will happen if all these qualities do not play any role, and the infinitely polite Sarah, who wants to make friends in this way, will receive only politeness in return? Of course, the heroine will be disappointed, close in herself or even worse, will try to impose her society by force, which, as mentioned above, takes place in the second half of the film. For a better understanding of the situation – in the most exaggerated format.
Horse Girl Ending Explained
We do not know what exactly happened at the end of the film, because there are many variations that can be used to interpret the ending.
For example, Sarah is really crazy. Or is she really that girl (grandmother) with a photo, which, by mistake (or on purpose), was thrown several decades ahead, having previously erased her memory.
At the end of the film, having ended up in a psychiatric hospital and meeting there a girl from her dream, who says that she has been at this time since 1995, Sarah realizes that she really moves in time. Or someone is moving it. While in the hospital, the heroine goes through the most significant “journey”, which, upon arrival, throws her to the beginning of the film. This is confirmed by the scene involving Sarah’s horse walking past a fabric store and how Joan, Sarah’s colleague, spots the animal, just like at the beginning of the film.
