Director Todd Solondz Talks New Film ‘Dark Horse’

Director Todd Solondz is known for particularly dark films that deal with murder, suicide, rape, child molestation, and abortion, and his new movie, Dark Horse, is no different.

Reuters reports that the New Jersey-born Solondz’s latest film stars Abe (Jordan Gelber), an overweight man in his 30s who still lives with his parents, and his attempt to romance Miranda (Selma Blair), a young woman struggling with depression who also lives at home.

Solondz recently sat down with Reuters to speak about Dark Horse. When they asked about accusations that he is cruel and perverse toward his characters, the director responded:

“Those are the nice things people have called me. I am human and I don’t really relish people saying bad things about me, but I understand that my movies always generate an ambivalent response. I wish I had a stronger character and was indifferent to all the criticism. That’d make life much easier. But I’m not.”

When talking about his latest film. Todd Solondz explained that:

“I set out to make a boy-meets-girl story, and it seems I ended with an alternative take on the whole arrested development genre that Judd Apatow made famous with ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin’ and other films of that sort.”

L.A. Weekly’s Karina Longworth writes of the new Solondz film that:

“Dark Horse is a psychodrama in the literal sense: Much of it seemingly takes place in Abe’s mind. It’s a terrain cluttered with demons, in the form of feel-bad consumerism, fear of Muslims, sexual neuroses, hypochondria, paternal expectations, sibling competition (Abe’s brother is “marriage material” in every way that Abe is not) and relationships with mother figures that are both stifling and seductive.”

Will you be seeing Todd Solondz’s film Dark Horse?

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