Horsehead Review (VOD)

  Follow the wolf, run from the horse... Horsehead is A Nightmare on Elm St. as interpreted by David Lynch, deformed fetus and all. Jessica is interested in lucid dreaming, and she's not going to let a dead grandmother get in the way of her studies. Returning to her childhood home where she finds more companionship with the butler than her parents or her deceased “old bag” of a grandma, she spends most of the trip huffing ether to continue her “academic” pursuits of controlling her unconscious mind. Is she determined to make a breakthrough, or is she a complete sociopath with severe mental illness and addiction problems?

  As Jessica delves deeper into madness/clarity she uncovers clues regarding the hidden, dark underbelly of her family history. The butler reveals her grandmother committed suicide by jumping out of a top story window, and her dead gram-gram tells her to “find the key” which may reveal why there may or may not be a dead, aborted twin hidden in a wall in the attic. Meanwhile grandpa is jabbing giant sewing needles into mom's stomach and threatening to send her to a church for bad girls. Why is Jess getting fingered by a hot, younger version of grandma in the bathtub then making out with her mother? Who knows.

  Horsehead works best on the surreal, purely visual level of the nightmare sequences. This is obviously a low budget movie, but it's quite impressive how much fidelity is able to come across the screen on such a small scale production. The dreams have an appropriately drunken quality, full of symbolism both abstract and overt. It occasionally wanders into trying too hard or hitting things too bluntly, but if you can relax and admire the sights and the work that went into realizing them it's an enjoyable, breezy ride.

  As Jessica's dreams start to affect the “real world” and reality bleeds into her nighttime excursions, you start to dread the waking life almost as much as Jessica. The acting isn't bad per se, it just seems... awkward. English clearly isn't the actors' native language, and there's a jarring number of accents for such a tiny cast. Some voices seem dubbed by necessity, some intentionally, and you can see the strain in faces as some concentrate all their efforts on remembering their lines. The plot of Jess playing Little Nemo: Family Detective isn't particularly strong or original either, but instead comes across as a necessity to establish a sense of normalcy.

  And that's fine for this type of movie. You want to see some weird shit? Horsehead will show you some weird shit, including a nightmare monster named Horsehead that eventually explodes or melts or something. The finer plot points fall apart the more you examine them, so it's a relief the film ends when it does, not bothering to over explain itself and instead opting for closure more akin to Deadly Premonition. You can dig into the visual storytelling on display here and look for deeper meaning or just accept it as a drug induced bad dream. It's an effective film either way, but I'd nudge you toward the latter.