Jake Horsley

Jake Horsley (born 1967) is a London-based film critic and author.

Background

Horsley is an independent scholar and world traveler, the youngest son of Nicholas Horsley, the millionaire chairman of Northern Foods. Horsley has traveled for most of his life, living at various times in New York, Mexico, New Mexico, Paris, Spain, Guatemala, and Portugal. In 1991 he disinherited his personal fortune and traveled to Morocco to live on the streets. In 2003, Horsley published Matrix Warrior: Being the One, in which he combined the plot of the 1999 movie The Matrix with the teachings of Carlos Castaneda, and argued that reality is an illusory construct designed to enslave humans and drain their life-force as food for "inorganic beings." According to Horsley "the first step to unplugging is an overwhelming sense of disgust, despair, and contempt with life, the world, and everything. For many it begins at the home, with family members, possibly via 'romantic' relationships, in which we begin to feel the terrible suffocating influence of other people's thoughts and expectations." Horsley also claimed during this period to be "the One," or at least in the running. When asked how he would know for sure, he replied, "book sales." Matrix Warrior sold around 12,000 copies. Horsley has since declared his resignation as "the One" but continues to publish. He is also an independent filmmaker and has made the feature film Beauty Fool and six documentary shorts, The God Game: An Investigation Into the Illusory Nature of Reality, none of which have yet been released.

Writing

Horsley's film analyses have appeared in various publications, including New Dawn magazine, Film Festival Magazine, and The Guardian. He worked as a contributing editor and film reviewer for Oaxaca Times in Oaxaca, Mexico in 2004, and currently writes film reviews for The List (magazine), an Edinburgh-based publication.

His first work was published in 1999 and called The Blood Poets: A Cinema of Savagery 1958-1999, from University Press of America, in two volumes. It was well reviewed by Salon and New Yorker critic Pauline Kael, who called Horsley "a marvelous critic." In 2005, Horsley published Dogville Vs. Hollywood: the War Between Mainstream Movies and Independent Cinema, from Marion Boyars, UK (who also published Kael's work). In the book, Horsley argued that the Hollywood system, like all organized businesses, develops a will of its own that runs counter to its supposed public function (in this case, to entertain). Horsley compares Hollywood to the medical industry which thrives on keeping people in poor health and thereby dependent on it, and to political institutions which create social problems in order to then provide ready-made "solutions." Horsley argues how, in its bid for self-preservation, Hollywood slowly squeezes out the elements that run counter to its agenda (ie, artists with visionary goals), its aim to make money by making movies that leave audiences frustrated and unsatisfied. This way, like sick patients, they keep coming back for more. He also compared the film industry to a wine press that gets the best out of filmmakers, "but crushes them in the process."

Opinions

Though little known, Horsley has garnered a certain amount of notoriety (and perhaps the beginnings of a cult following) for his scathing, "take no prisoners" style of film criticism, such as for example when he described Woody Allen as "a former artist," or George Lucas as "the most inept filmmaker ever to attain the status of movie giant ... a prince with the sensibilities of a toad, so utterly out of touch with anything beyond his masturbatory fantasy world that he can no longer be considered human in the usual sense." As well as shooting down movie giants, Horsley has a tendency to champion little-known, underrated or overlooked films and filmmakers, such as when he called Keith Gordon "one of the dozen or so most gifted and challenging filmmakers working in America," or more recently, reviewing Ethan Hawke's (unreleased) The Hottest State: "Hawke imbues the film with the wisdom and acceptance of a broken heart made stronger and freer by the breakage."

Jake Horsley's Blog8

Official Website9