By LINDSI HEBERT, Staff Reporter.
Released (barely) in 2014 and directed by Alexandre Aja and based off the book Horns by Joe Hill, this film tells the story of Ignatius (Ig) Perrish (Daniel Radcliffe) as he wakes up on the floor of his apartment with one hell of a hangover.
I mean one hell of a hangover, too. Ig happens to wake up on morning after desecrating the memorial service to his dead girlfriend. He also happens to have two horns sprouting out of his forehead that only he can see, and they often whisper to him, telling him to do bad things.
His girlfriend died mysteriously, and though Ig was never accused of the crime, the entire town is one drunk night away from an angry mob. There are constant protestors outside of his house and places refuse him service. How does he deal with this? By dancing to David Bowie, and then going to the bar that’s only serving him out of pity. In his adventures, Ig declares that he’s going to find his girlfriend’s killer and finish him off. Now that he has the horns to contend with, though, things are getting a bit…Difficult.
This movie was released so sneakily that I completely missed it, and then POOF. “Horns” showed up on Netflix and I made excited screeching noises. Aja’s an award winning director, and has made quite a few popular movies, like the iffy remake of The Hills Have Eyes, Piranha, and my personal favorite, High Tension.
The novel Horns was incredibly complex, and Joe Hill did a good job writing it. In fact, it’s on my list of favorite books. The problem is condensing a story like Horns into a two hour movie, because there’s just so much that needs to be told and shown. Aja has some experience with horror, so I just kind of crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
What I got wasn’t really breathtaking, but it could have been a whole lot worse. While the movie Horns does follow along with the book to some degree, it takes out a lot of character development that the audience really needed to be established. For this reason, some of the bigger parts of the movie (no spoilers) end up not having as large of an impact as they should have.
The best part, though, is seeing how the horns on Ig’s head are effecting his surroundings. At one point, somebody tells him she wants to beat her brat of a daughter, divorce her husband and go have sex with her golf instructor. It’s interesting to see how Ig reacts to those statements and makes the movie more complicated and disturbingly funny at times.
Radcliffe did a good job playing Ig. It didn’t feel forced, and Horns didn’t feel like a movie he did to prove that he wasn’t Harry Potter anymore. Ig’s really not the type of character you can screw up, but Radcliffe got the point across.
On a scale of one to five gummy bears, with five being the highest, Horns gets two out of five gummy bears. It’s a good film, it’s a better book, watch it or read it, Horns is worth the time.
If you’re having trouble finding this movie or are already a fan of the book and just now finding out it’s a movie, you can watch Horns on Amazon instant watch, or on Netflix respectively.
