[Movie Review] Horns (2014)
Director: Alexandre Aja
Writers: Keith Bunin (screenplay), Joe Hill (novel)
Runtime: 120 min
Main Cast:
- Daniel Radcliffe as Ig Perrish
- Max Minghella as Lee Tourneau
- Joe Anderson as Terry Perrish
- Juno Temple as Merrin Williams
- Kelli Garner as Glenna Shepherd
Review: by Anthony
I'm a fan of Daniel Radcliffe, Joe Hill's graphic novels, and silly horror movies. With that in mind, I saw the first trailers and knew I had to see Horns.
Horns stars Daniel Radcliffe as Ig Perrish, who, after the rape and murder of his girlfriend Merrin (Juno Temple), is prime suspect #1. The sudden appearance of horns sprouting from his head don’t make matters any better for Ig, but his new horns come with some peculiar supernatural powers that will aid him in solving his girlfriend’s death.
What I Liked:
As I said before, I’m a fan of Daniel Radcliffe as an actor. It’s undoubtedly due to the eight times I ran to the theater to see him as Harry Potter. I’ve been watching him on the big screen for a decent chunk of my life, and now he’s taking on more roles using his American accent and doing practically everything he can to distance himself from being The Boy Who Lived.
I was familiar with Joe Hill’s graphic novel Horns and the main thing I was looking forward to was the strange powers that manifested along with Ig’s horns. When the town folk are in Ig’s presence, they start spilling their darkest secrets and telling the brutal honest truth that they’d normally never dare speak aloud.
This was by far the funniest and best thing in the entire movie, from the news reporters literally fighting for the exclusive interview for their own self-promotion and the waitresses admitting to doing anything and everything to just become a reality TV star to the drunk guy in the bar that just wants to show everybody his junk.
What I Didn’t Like:
After getting past the comedy elements of spilling your guts because of Ig’s horns, there’s not much else to enjoy in Horns. For a horror movie, I didn’t expect much in terms of plot and story, but somehow, the story that’s told drags along for 120 minutes when it could’ve been done in 80 minutes.
The acting is pretty bad. Really bad actually. Daniel Radcliffe is clearly the best this movie has to offer, and he’s weighed down by a bad script that awkwardly tells this far-out-there story that nose-dives in the end.
For practically every scene Juno Temple (Merrin) is in, the dialogue is like that of a terrible high school play. The scene between her and Max Minghella (Lee) was cringe-worthy.
The CGI and special effects were comical, and not in a good way. It looked as though the entire budget went to the different stages of Ig’s horns. The later effects for the snakes and Ig’s demonic transformations reminded me of a Sony Playstation 2 game’s cutscene.
Summary
Horns was a fun horror movie to watch for about 3/4ths of the movie, and then quickly went left as the movie came to a close. Daniel Radcliffe, like his American accent, was passable, but he can do better in picking out starring roles. Wait for this to hit Netflix or Redbox.
User Review
( votes)Images Courtesy of IMDB
