Horse Girl (Jeff Baena, 2020)

"Landfill Netflix" doesn't roll off the tongue as easily as "landfill indie," that indelible designation for the acres of pedestrian, post-Libertines Brit bands lining the unplayed corners of our iTunes (although I don't see why we can't apply it to the landfill plowed by the success of Nirvana in 1990s America - Rollerskate Skinny, anyone?). But we need a similar term to describe the acres of pedestrian Sundancery acquired via Netflix's cavernous coffers, a catchall phrase for films like Horse Girl which we need to remember to forget. Nothing too hideous or enraging about it. It merely embodies the indie-film aesthetic (here, the Duplass Brothers Productions house style) with all the excitement of a particularly well-executed toenail clip. There's an excellent, appropriately suffocating electronic score by Josiah Steinbrick and Jeremy Zuckerman. Molly Shannon and Paul Reiser are on board in small roles for that crucial 1990s texture. The narrative in several scenes is attractively clipped. But as with drug addiction in Requiem for a Dream, Horse Girl uses mental illness as a pretext for cheap surrealism and an empty ending. It just sits there being all nice and indie and authentic. In short, Horse Girl is selling substance as novelty, to borrow a terrific phrase from Robert Christgau. Which, come to think, does get rather hideous and enraging when meditating on it for more than a chunky paragraph.

Grade: a generous C+