Horns, 2013.
Directed by Alexandre Aja.
Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Juno Temple, Heather Graham, David Morse, James Remar, Kathleen Quinlan and Max Minghella.
SYNOPSIS:
Ig Perrish wakes up after a night of heavy drinking to find himself a suspect in his girlfriend’s murder…
Here’s a film which wants to be all things to all audiences but in doing so harms the initial good work laid out by wishing to catering to everyone yet ultimately satisfying no one. Why some films cannot stand by their convictions would be a puzzle if it were not glaringly obvious they are after every last dollar they can find. They’ll say it’s a horror! It’s a comedy! It’s a thriller! It’s a whodunit! But they never tell you the truth; it’s a mess.
Horns starts off deceivingly well and treats the audience to a concept we’ve not seen before as it entices us in to its weird yet familiar world. Ig (Daniel Radcliffe) is a nice guy suspected of murdering his nice girlfriend and the rage inside leads him to sprout horns from his head. Actual physical horns like you’d see in any image of Satan himself. Nearly everyone can see these horns yet everyone accepts them as if he just had a growth which can easily be removed with no cause for concern. Like the audience, Ig is baffled as to what the hell (pun mostly intended) is going on. Horns has us from the off.
The movie then begins to remind me of a Stephen King novel, especially parts of Needful Things, as everyone Ig talks to speaks to him honestly and unashamedly, regardless of who is around or what the subject matter might be so is the effect of the horns he has grown. A woman with her screaming child tells him how much she’d like to kick it up the arse and drive off with her golf instructor; a doctor says he is having a hard time concentrating because his female assistant is just distracting; two male cops express their hidden love for each other and fantasies of making love in their patrol car. But what makes all of this worth describing is that it is so genuinely funny in how unexpected it was. I knew nothing of Horns before watching it, but I never assumed it would be as funny as it was, with Radcliffe first perplexed, then using the power for his own gain in his efforts to find out who killed his girlfriend.
All of this is in the film’s first half and it moves swiftly to this point whilst giving some flashback sequences of equal standing to show Ig and his friends’ growing up and how he and his girlfriend met. Unfortunately the second hour unfolds as if written by a different person for a different movie; gone is the adults only humour and in comes a PG-13 thriller where questionable CGI takes over from quirky bemusement. Once the killer is revealed the film no longer holds any entertainment value for everything becomes self-serious, depending on a level of investment in characters which simply isn’t there and a need to provide a showdown which we’ve seen countless times before. Director Alexandre Aja loses his once-firm grip on the story to allow CGI to take over – which lessens Daniel Radcliffe’s involvement as an actor which, until this point, had impressed a non-Potter fan such as I.
I thought the films was going to end on three different occasions and the two hour running time is at least 20 minutes too long for the story it is trying to tell. All of this culminates in a film which was at first strange, funny, and unexpectedly joyful in its knowingness of how silly it is, but one which ends up being that worst of all offenders; a real bore. What the devil happened (pun definitely intended) to make the film makers choose this destination is a mystery more worthy of pursuing than that of who killed the girlfriend.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Rohan Morbey – follow me on Twitter.
Originally published October 29, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
