BEFORE: After tonight, just two more films until the Thanksgiving break - then I'll really need to start thinking about getting Christmas cards out and buying some gifts, though from what I've heard about the mail system, there's going to be another slowdown - so between that and the supply chain problems left over from the pandemic, I'm thinking it already might be too late. Time to start shopping for Christmas 2022 if you want the gifts to arrive in time, I guess.
John Ortiz carries over again from "Jack Goes Boating".
THE PLOT: Sarah, a socially isolated woman with a fondness for arts and crafts, horses and supernatural crime shows finds her increasingly lucid dreams trickling into her waking life.
AFTER: Well, it's been another year of weird movies, I can say that now, even if it's not over yet. What could I possibly see in the last 18 movies that's weirder than what I've seen so far? I feel like Rutger Hauer's character in "Blade Runner" talking about all the things he'd seen, like the attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. Don't forget I started this year with "Parasite" and "Okja", two strong contenders on the weirdness scale. Then all that Bergman, from "The Seventh Seal" to "Hour of the Wolf" and "Cries and Whispers". "I'm Thinking of Ending Things", I'm still not sure what I watched there. Talking animals in "The One and Only Ivan" and "Dolittle" barely move the weird needle, given some of the things I saw this year. "The One I Love" - the weird highlight of the romance chain.
Time travel movies are inherently weird - and I'll do a full breakdown after Christmas, probably, but "Tenet"? Come on, that one was totally weird, but also very great. Unlike "Fantasy Island" and "Wonder Woman 1984", which were weird and terrible. "Palm Springs", "Soul", "Mortdecai", "Zeroville", all very weird in their own ways. And that's all BEFORE getting to horror movies, many of which are inherently weird, but they follow their own rules. A film where everyone somehow forgets the Beatles music is weird, but it's practically quaint and charming compared to some the other films I've seen.
OK, I've got to narrow it down, the five weirdest films (good and bad) so far in 2021 are, in some order: "Brightburn", "Soul", "Tenet", "Cats" and I've got to say "Horse Girl". Ooh, but there was also "The Suicide Squad", "A Cure for Wellness", "Scooby-Doo 2" and "Filth", do you see how hard this is to choose? "Hellboy" and "Monster Hunter", what about them? Any way you slice it, I've got to think about "Horse Girl" as a contender because it starts out so normal, and then (Umm, big SPOILER ALERT for what's to follow) by the end it's completely bonkers. To the point where I don't know whether to take the last half hour seriously at all, whether it's all a dream or the lead character has gone insane or died or what.
At the onset, it's a lot like "Jack Goes Boating", in that the lead character is single, socially awkward and perhaps something of a loser, but come on, we've seen that situation turn itself around many times before. Sarah binge-watches old episodes of an X-Files like cop show called "Purgatory", and it's a bit of a problem when the storylines start mixing with real life. She connects with her roommate's boyfriend's roommate, named Darren, just like the main character in her show, and it's downhill from there. One morning she thinks her car is stolen, but it's found miles from her home and towed to an impound lot. Sarah also starts waking up in strange places, so the simplest answer is that she sleep-drove the car somewhere herself, and then walked home. But there aren't really many more simple answers here after that.
Sarah has a friend who's not mentally all there, I think we see in the flashbacks that she fell off a horse when they were kids, and well, let's just say she leads an active fantasy life. Sarah cares for a horse that she used to own, but no longer does, and it seems like the stable owners just wish she'd get the hint and stop coming around to visit. She also has photos of her grandmother, whom she greatly resembles, and starts to wonder if she might somehow be her grandmother's clone, even though cloning wasn't even a thing back then. But there's no good way to have your doctor test to see if you're a clone, without the original to compare DNA to.
There's so many dropped threads, though, that the facts here are very elusive - Sarah takes a DNA profile test, but we never see the results. There's a tarot card reader in the crafts store at the start of the film who offers her a reading, but Sarah never takes her up on the offer - so I wonder what she might have learned? Sarah gets a post-birthday visit from Gary, her dead mother's husband, who gives her a pile of cash as a gift, but Sarah for some reason spends the money on replacing the pipes in her kitchen, which is a bit weird because it's a rental apartment. Like, who DOES that?
There is a reason for that, though - Sarah has lucid dreams where she's lying in a giant white space, with a man lying on one side and a woman on the other. She recognizes the man the next day, out in the real world, and he manages a plumbing service. Sure, it all makes sense now. Sarah bounces between theories about cloning, alien abductions and time travel before she goes completely off the rails (umm, I think) and has to be put in an asylum. It's POSSIBLE that everything in the film after this point takes place in her mind, but I can't really be sure.
You have to decide for yourself here, I can't help any further - is this an engrossing portrayal of someone who's mentally ill and trying to make sense of the world, or are aliens abducting people and moving them through time, and if so, for what purpose? Considering the news of the last week, is this really any weirder than crowds of people showing up in Dallas to welcome JFK Jr. back from the dead, so he could become Donald Trump's running mate? I know, I know, I'm pretty sure that dead people aren't eligible to hold public office, but people showed up just the same.
Also starring Alison Brie (last seen in "Scream 4"), Debby Ryan (last seen in "Life of the Party"), John Reynolds, Molly Shannon (last seen in "The Layover"), Jay Duplass (last seen in "Duck Butter"), Robin Tunney (last seen in "Supernova"), Paul Reiser (last seen in "The Spy Who Dumped Me"), Matthew Gray Gubler (last heard in "All-Star Superman"), Meredith Hagner (last seen in "Brightburn"), Jake Picking (last seen in "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), Dylan Gelula, Toby Huss (last seen in "Equals"), Angela Trimbur, David Paymer (last seen in "Where'd You Go, Bernadette"), Aaron Stanford (last seen in "25th Hour"), Dendrie Taylor (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), Lauren Weedman (last seen in "The Gambler"), Luis Fernandez-Gil, Sharae Nikai, Victoria Clare, Zoe Saltz, Stella Chestnut, Hazel Armenante, Mary Apick, Bonnie Burroughs (last seen in "Easy A").
RATING: 4 out of 10 Zumba classes
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