Popcorn and Inspiration: ‘Orphan Horse’: A Family Drama About Love Overcoming the Fear of Loss

TV-14 | 1h 44 min | Drama, Family | 2018

You’re orphaned only when everyone gives up on you and you give up on yourself. That’s central to director Sean McNamara’s touching movie about coping with the pain of loss and abandonment.

In spite of its name, McNamara’s film is about three orphans, not just one.

Orphaned Shelly (played by 12-year-old Alexa Nisenson) is on the run from physically abusive foster parents who love welfare-support checks more than the children under their care. Hungry, cold, and afraid, she takes refuge in a stable on the property of Ben Crowley (Jon Voight), a cantankerous old former horse trainer, who’s a bit of an orphan himself. More on that shortly.

Reluctantly and crankily, Ben agrees to let Shelly stay hidden at his place. In exchange, the little girl offers to care for Ben’s just-orphaned and fearful filly. In time, horse, man and girl form an unlikely bond, drawing hope and strength from each other.

Running from a cruel foster home, Shelly (Alexa Nisenson, L) seeks protection with Caroline Crowley (Vail Bloom), in "Orphan Horse." (Prime Video)

Enter conscientious child-welfare worker Caroline Crowley (Vail Bloom), Ben’s estranged daughter. Following a plea from Shelly’s crooked and cruel foster parents, Masta and Gerald Jenkins (Eva LaRue and Scott Summitt), Caroline and Jake Givens (Philip Boyd), her boyfriend and town sheriff, look for the runaway and end up at Ben’s door.

Ben isn’t a misanthrope. He cares deeply, not just about animals but about people as well. Trouble is, he’s spent his whole life emotionally distancing himself when in pain, that it’s now more like a habit, a reflex. Small wonder that he’s socially “orphaned” by family, friends, and townsfolk; his visibly painful limp, an external sign of how emotionally hobbled he is.

Charming Shelly, wise beyond her years, changes all that. She teaches Ben to open himself to the pain of others, not just his own, and to seek healing in forgiveness. The banter she shares with him drips with insight and humor. She playfully mocks the old man’s lack of imagination when she finds that he’s named his filly, well, “Filly.”

Hungry, cold, and afraid, Shelly (Alexa Nisenson) takes refuge on the property of Ben Crowley (Jon Voight), in "Orphan Horse." (Prime Video)

Gazing lovingly into the filly’s frightened eyes, Shelly christens her “Orphan” because it can be a good name “if you own it” for “it makes you stronger.” She knows too well that, if you suffer the pain of loss, you must develop inner strength to keep from collapsing. She’d watched Orphan’s mother fall prey to marauding wolves, just as she’d earlier watched her own mother fall prey to a fatal disease.

Shelly’s Orphan

Afraid of Ben who’d had to put her mother down after the wolf attack, Orphan warms to Shelly’s soft touch and kind voice. Their scenes together are some of the best.

Nisenson shares outstanding screen chemistry with Voight and, for a 12-year-old, showcases extraordinary emotional depth. When she weeps you feel her regret, her anxiety. And when she smiles, it’s like sunrise. Voight is convincing as a man whose life has passed him by, but whose protective paternal instinct is rekindled with the arrival of the little girl.

Voight and Nisenson are short-changed by mediocre supporting cast performances, shoddy use of flashbacks, and prosaic dialogue. Still, McNamara’s movie has its heart in the right place, and celebrates vital values for parents and children who feel starved of wholesome family films like this.

McNamara’s opening shot is of Shelly running away from (rather than toward) something or someone. Later, asked if she suspects that Ben is secretly sheltering the runaway, Caroline regretfully clarifies, “Ben’s someone you run away from, not to.”

Director Sean McNamara on the set of "Orphan Horse." (Prime Video)

McNamara leverages some soulful music, thoughtfully-filmed silences, and leisurely shots of the countryside to tell his story. The first 10 minutes of his movie has barely any dialogue, and he lavishes his camera on sprawling plains, falling aspen leaves in the cool evening sun, and a laughing Shelly riding Orphan in a lush grassland. At root, though, is a parable about the fear of loss that lurks behind loss itself.

Loss of Family

Ben laments his failure to protect his family. He blames himself for the accidental deaths that claimed his wife and other daughter many years ago. He blames himself for shutting Caroline out of his life in the wake of that tragedy.

His determination to nurture horses is, partly, an attempt to cope with that failure. Watch him futilely reassure Orphan’s wounded and dying mother, “Don’t you worry girl, I won’t let anything happen to you, or your daughter.”

McNamara caricatures Shelly’s foster parents to distinguish between friendship and family. Love, he seems to say, isn’t a casual matter of hanging out with someone, but a deep and shared commitment. A friend can be replaced in a way that a family can’t always be.

Jake’s wooing of Caroline isn’t merely a subplot, it’s critical to McNamara’s theme of abandonment. Even after three years of courtship, Caroline dreads committing because she dreads losing someone she’s committed to. But that’s merely a painful echo of once losing her father’s love.

Jake, for his part, would rather see a ring at the end of their seemingly indefinite courtship, instead of more “hanging out,” and it surfaces in an aside with Ben.

Ben: “You like my daughter, eh?”

Jake: “No, I love her!”

"Orphan Horse" is a story of overcoming abandonment and loss. (Prime Video)

‘Orphan Horse’ Director: Sean McNamara Starring: Jon Voight, Alexa Nisenson, Vail Bloom MPAA Rating: TV-14 Running Time: 1 hour, 44 minutes Release Date: Nov. 20, 2018 Rated: 3 stars out of 5