Breathlessly, ardently I beseech you all to harken to my call. Let me be the harbinger of a cinema most revolutionary! Blossoming right under our very noses, is a very special subculture of tweens that call themselves “horse girls.” They are a dedicated and enthusiastic group of young, and maybe not so young, women who collect and paint model horses. This would not be of any particular import or interest however this horse girl community has been bitten by the cinematic bug.
These young ladies are making videos starring their model horses in a myriad of different romantic contexts. The films are not stop-motion because the models are not posable. They are live action videos using carefully hidden hands to move the horses around. These films are not cutesy rip-offs of My Pretty Pony, they are graphic and sometimes gory rip-offs of Game of Thrones and other such adult fare. The horses wield swords and bleed ketchup and curse at each other. The films have titles like Necrosis, made by Snoopyismyhorse, Vengeance Rain, made by foxglory123. (You really missed an opportunity with the spelling of rein foxglory123) and Trapped made by Darkstorm.
These budding auteurs are at the vanguard of what I like to call The New Equine Cinema. The production value is quite high. There’s chiaroscuro lighting, miniature candles, a full cast of voice actors, although I believe they are all girls. The plots are impenetrably dense and populated by countless characters who all look awfully similar, but the same can be said of Game of Thrones.
If the gritty lust and strife of the yesteryear genre is too much for you there are also films set in the present era. There are romances like Barnaby Cross made by RedstoneManor, or Cloudless, made by BreyerHorseLover 312. These films star both human dolls and model horses. Cloudless has a nice twist in which the audience can understand the horses but the human dolls can not. My Love Was Stolen, also made by BreyerHorseLover 312, features the same conceit about language as Cloudless but My Love Was Stolen has what is probably an unintended subtext about chattel slavery and its effect on the psyche. Horses are sold away from each other or forced into pairings. They’re treated like… well, animals.
These talking horses, who are not understood by their masters or by people in general, surely represent tweens’ in general. The horses are the James Dean or Lady Gaga of a new generation. Ah, to be young and misunderstood. I believe Orwell put it best when he said “Four legs good two legs bad!”
The horses mouths don’t move so they sort of shake with each word. Sometimes they whiney between their sentences, and amid the tense drama and overwrought dialogue there are lines like “well, on the other hoof” and “I wouldn’t raise a hoof against him.”
Dark Paradise, made by DB Productionz, has no pretense to human civilization. Its a straight forward talking horses vs, talking wolves saga. Its quite violent. There is lots of spurting, home made, very viscous, bright, magenta, blood.
Conquering Tide made by Cinnamon Studios is an amazing Smörgåsbord of accents. There is a very believable South African accent and a not so believable Scottish accent. I heard The Queen’s English as well, and one horse gets called out by the others for speaking in American slang. Conquering Tide depicts mythological horses with super powers. They have names like Gaia, Romulus and Odin. The production and cinematography in this film are not quite as polished as some of the others but, like early Scorsese, Cinnamon Studios uses their rough and ready style to be adventurous. There are special effects and liberal use of faux camera flares, very liberal use. Mixed in with the “live” action are paper cut outs which are used as an animation of sorts.
Disney and Pixar need to acknowledge the New Equine Cinema and maybe try following in these young women’s hoof prints. (sorry) There is an untapped lust for cutthroat action and lurid sex that the tweens apparently crave. One of the episodes of Vengeance Rain opens with a rape that escalates in to strangulation and murder.
Every year these girls gather at convention’s like BryerFest to appreciate each other’s work and spread the word. These young women have taken the banal accoutrements of a girlish childhood and forged something wonderful for themselves and each other.
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