Horsehead

This phantasmagorical French horror movie is about a young college student who is dealing with troubling memories of her past by studying Freud and experimenting with "lucid dreaming". When her maternal grandmother dies, she joins her mother in her grandparent's country estate where she uses her lucid dreaming skills to uncover dark family secrets.

This film somewhat reminded me of the Walerian Borowzyk film "La Bete", but without the shocking imagery or nearly as strong of a grasp of Freudian surrealism. The "Horsehead" monster that haunts the dreams of the heroine may be the literal embodiment of a "nightmare" (or "cauchemare" in French), but horses are such magnificent and beautiful animals that it's hard to make them look too frightening or threatening. The weird imagery and occasionally effective atmosphere of this film is somewhat of a throwback to an earlier era, and it is refreshing in an age where "horror" is often synonymous with tons of gory effects, "torture porn", and shot-on-video "found-footage" bullsh*t. But the images, while pretty and colorful, are a little pedestrian and frankly just not all scary.

The movie does get a lot of mileage out of pretty, young French actress Lily-Fleur Pointeaux. I think at least half the audience will be very favorably disposed to scenes where she luxuriates in a bathtub with her magnificent breasts bobbing and glistening (bobbing and glistening. . .). But she also does a decent job carrying the principal weight of this movie, especially considering I've only previously seen her in small supporting roles in films like "Ma Premiere Pas" and "We Need a Vacation".

This film could have used some stronger and perhaps more shocking imagery like "La Bete" or the more recent French/Belgian film "Amer", but it's not an entirely unpleasant way to pass 90 minutes.

By certain aspects, "Horsehead" made for me thought of the Dario Argento's Inferno : both movies have in common to be enigmatic, fascinating, of a total pictorial beauty, but also to rather hermetic and difficult to access.

Horsehead risks hardly to embarrass and to divide the spectators. The movie is not indeed an entertainment popcorn and will ask a real effort of attention and especially an emotional participation and a total dumping in its universe.

Horsehead indeed takes the shape of a nightmare in the shape of mysterious puzzle, plunging her heroine into a terrible, dreamlike, fantastical, gory and erotic universe.

Following the example of "Lords of Salem" (Rob Zombie - 2012), Horsehead is for my part one of the most interesting proposals of the fantastic movies seen for a long time.

(sorry for my English...)

I fully agree with Angiris' review above. I thought he articulated it really well as to what this film is 'about' and how it comes across.

I THINK that I can see what the director is TRYING to do. I appreciate a number of the visual sequences, especially the REALLY creative lighting. The Ambient soundtrack (NOT the sound design. I will come back to that in a moment) is quite good. VERY moody. This is the ONE aspect where I think the director did achieve a Lynchian feel in the movie. In my lowly and wretched opinion, IF they had just approached the film DIFFERENTLY, I think there was enough creative energy and vivid imagery to pull it off. BUT... what I feel is 'wrong' with this film and unfortunately where it fails in what it is TRYING to do, is just the approach is all wrong. If you are going to imitate or be inspired by or try to have a similar approach to a film as, say, David Lynch, I feel that the single, vital thing ABOVE ALL is the MOOD that you create. Now, I feel that he did this SOMETIMES with certain short sequences. But, where I feel that he worked against himself is by 'jarring' or kind of 'cross-purposing' the very mood he was trying to create by introducing a kinetic visual style and Techno-Electronic sound that, to me anyway, totally destroyed whatever eerie, disturbing mood that he was trying to create.

Again, just my opinion... But, I think that if he had gone for a more laid back, static shot, murky sub-conscious approach and ditched all the Techno-Electronic / Mtv crap, then it likely would have worked pretty well. Just the wrong approach. And, what the HELL was up with the almost bloody CONTINUOUS hand-held crap in just about every scene. Dude... you are NOT going for a 'Found Footage' feel here mate. What the hell is the film all about anyway...? DREAMS, right? So, to me, it seems that the ENTIRE mood and visual / sonic approach to the film should have centered around Dreamy, murky, understated visuals and effects. Just SLOW the damn thing down dude... All that hyperkinetic Techno stuff, in my opinion, just ruins the whole thing. This is PRECISELY why I hate the 'American Horror Story' series. Absolutely NO subtlety at all...

Look... if you are making a film about 'Lucid Dreaming', I can understand why you would want to let loose with all these GREAT awesome visuals. Okay, fine... However, WAIT until you build up to it. WAIT until you create a ponderous and disturbing and YES, a DREAMY mood, even a Nightmarish mood and then BUILD and ratchet up the tension until you have this great WILD, Hallucinatory finale. THAT would work, I think. It was a shame too, because some of the technical approaches and techniques were GREAT, in and of themselves. A shot here, a short sequence there. BUT... you HAVE to be able to put it all together in such a way that it is EFFECTIVE and creates the mood and overall result that you are trying to achieve.

Also, maybe it was just me, but I REALLY thought the girl was LAME. She was not a very good actress. So, when you are trying to evoke this deep, disturbing, subconscious fear in your audience, you ABSOLUTELY have to have an actress who can convey that BELIEVABLY and GEEZ, a LOT more subtly than this girl did. Particularly this really stupid, open-mouthed expression that she had throughout most of the film. Bad...

And I KNOW that I've harped on this before, and I KNOW it is one of my little personal neuroses, but the Sound Design was VERY amateurish, and at least to me, that takes me right out of the film every time. What I am talking about is like for example the girl is opening a little box across the room from the audience's perspective. And from where you and I are seeing her it is like 30 feet away. And yet, the sound of the cardboard rustling is around like 100 decibels and sounds like it is right next to your ear. Or, just in general, EVERY bloody sound is HUGELY amplified, every footstep, every swish of material, ALL of it is boosted up to '11' I'm sorry, but not only is that NOT at all realistic, but to me it just is plain stupid and inexcusable.

So, yes, I did give the film a '5' And yes, that is probably a little generous. BUT, what tears at me somewhat is that I can ALMOST see the film that the director is trying to make coming through on the screen, but it is hidden under all this crap that I mentioned which basically ruins it. And I DID truly appreciate the EXCEPTIONAL creativity that went into a lot of the lighting, editing, and some of the visual techniques, so I felt that my score should at least reflect my acknowledgment of some of these things.

I guess I would say that if you are like me and you REALLY like David Lynch and what he does, then you likely will find this film to be clumsy and conflicted in it's approach and mood. If you like the subtlety that David Lynch uses in his long, static shots, and SLOW build ups and weird images and visuals that seem like he dug them up right from your subconscious, then I think this film here will probably come across as far to jarring and disjointed. Now, IF you are the kind of person who likes stuff that is more 'In your face' and kinetic with an Electronic-Techno soundtrack, and you like more direct, brutal imagery, well then you might like this movie more than I did. So, it just depends on the TYPE of visually 'Out There' kind of stuff that you like...

This movie is indeed well done! The acting was good, the scenes and locations were perfect! The symbolism. And just the general quality of the movie was outstanding! I just had difficulty knowing what was going on much of the time. Also, there wasn't good flow for me. I had to watch it separate days to finish. Horsehead was a beautiful piece of cinematic art that wasn't that entertaining as a movie.

Surreal, phantasmagoric, enigmatic! HORSEHEAD is a visually stunning puzzle full of symbolic figures where each one of them represent one particular icon related to imagery of dreams. We can notice, for instance, the clear inspiration in some previous and notable works about the allegories of dreams, as the Henry Fuseli's painting THE NIGHTMARE. And this inspiration is not denied, it's even reinforced when at the beginning of the movie appears a picture of that famous painting... On the other hand it made me remind some surrealistic and artsy films of the 70's, in particular those from European cinema (also French cinema...). The kind of cinematography used, the short but puzzling plot, the enigmatic symbols and characters, the twisted eroticism, the camera work - focusing on certain plans and details... All of this truly make me compare this film to those remarkable movies of the 70's. But of course HORSEHEAD has it own value, in fact it's a great film that we could resume as a frantic journey into the depths of the subconscious, a dream that crosses two dimensions, ending both in one same reality...