‘We’re all horrible people. Humanity’s a fucking cesspool…’
Todd Solondz is mostly known for making films that make people feel uncomfortable, sad or both. They are ostensibly ‘comedies’, but only in the same way that Kendall mint cake is a ‘cake’. Dark Horse finds Solondz at his most misanthropic, but also at his most experimental. It’s a heady and often bewildering mix that makes for a predictably off-putting cinematic experience…
Abe (Jordan Gelber) is a lonely man-child who lives at home with his parents despite being in his thirties. Miranda (Selma Blair) is also back living with her parents following a messy breakup. After meeting at a wedding, the two of them form an unlikely and uneasy partnership. The starry supporting cast includes Christopher Walken, Mia Farrow and Aasif Mandvi.
Incorporating the dream logic of surrealism and the alienating strangeness of Charlie Kaufman, Dark Horse plays with audience expectation and narrative form in a way that is interesting rather than entertaining and occasionally feels arty for the sake of it. The narrative is rather slight, and while Gelber and Blair do their best with the material they are given, Dark Horse lacks the character development and narrative precision of something like Happiness.
While there are some effective comedic moments, mainly from Walken and Farrow, Dark Horse is neither a full blown comedy nor a fully serious drama. Instead, it uncomfortably straddles both genres without either offering the profundity that Solondz has demonstrated in previous films or much else in terms of flat out entertainment value.
Dark Horse doesn’t seem to know what it is. It sits there like an unwanted child staring defiantly into the abyss. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t really enjoy it either.
