"Are Those Horns?" "Damn Right They're Horns."
You don’t need to read this review. In your heart, you already know if you’re going to see this movie or not.
This is a film about Daniel Radcliffe growing horns and trying to find out who killed his girlfriend while his small town goes crazy all around him. You believe you are prepared, after hearing this little plot synopsis, to see “Horns”. You’re wrong. There is nothing that can prepare you for the sheer ridiculousness this film provides.
This film is especially interesting to watch after having seen “Gone Girl”, a far greater film with similar themes (or at least subject matter), a few weeks before. “Gone Girl” spectacularly subverts the given circumstances of a murder narrative, while “Horns” plays into every tired old trope that you’ve seen in a murder mystery before, adds supernatural and religious elements, then pours gasoline onto the whole mess and lights it on fucking fire. It is over the top. It is predictable while still being batshit insane. The characters are cardboard, the rules of the world don’t make sense, there are heavy misogynistic undercurrents running through the narrative, and the CGI doesn’t quite meet the demands the film places on it.
And I loved every second of it.
Let’s be clear, I won’t call “Horns” a “good” movie. But it demands to be seen. It is practically staring you down and daring you to avoid it. The film is part young adult romance, part torture porn, part quirky indie-style project and part surrealist horror. It keeps up a brave front by pretending to make sense, by pretending that the choices it is making when telling this story are cohesive, but they aren’t, and the resulting mess is glorious. For this reason, I won’t even call this movie a “bad” film. It’s too interesting to be “bad”. For reasons I can’t quite explain, I want to own this movie and bring it out at parties when the energy starts to run low.
I can’t pin all of the credit on Daniel Radcliffe, but he is a large part of it. I’m always excited to see Radcliffe in things and glad that when choosing roles he tends to go for the weirder, unpolished choice instead of the conventional one. He’s well on his way to solidifying a reputation as a risk-taker in the film world, and I hope it pays off for him. That said, his performance was well-suited to this film: bombastic, emotional and at times off-putting. You can say that for all the actors, really, all of whom put their souls into bringing their roles to life, even when their characters didn’t seem to serve a purpose.
Unfortunately for “Horns”, the script is working against it every step of the way. Really, this film turned out as well as it could have with such a meandering and at times senseless plot. The film shines when it embraces the evil, as Ig does, and commits wholeheartedly to burning itself into your brain.
Perhaps this review doesn’t make much sense either. But you’ll take from it what you need to. Like I said, you already know if you’ll enjoy “Horns”.
DRINK:
Try the Cherry Bomb cocktail. A semi-important plot point revolves around cherry bombs.
POSSIBLE RULES:
-Drink whenever you notice that Ig's horns have grown
-Drink whenever someone falls under the influence of the horns
-Drink for religious or satanic imagery
-More specifically, drink whenever you see Merrin's cross
-Drink when something breaks
This review was written by Hollis Beck (Krissy Pappau). "Horns" is produced by Red Granite Pictures and Mandalay Pictures, and distributed by Dimension Films. The film is rated "R" with a runtime of 120 minutes.
This film is especially interesting to watch after having seen “Gone Girl”, a far greater film with similar themes (or at least subject matter), a few weeks before. “Gone Girl” spectacularly subverts the given circumstances of a murder narrative, while “Horns” plays into every tired old trope that you’ve seen in a murder mystery before, adds supernatural and religious elements, then pours gasoline onto the whole mess and lights it on fucking fire. It is over the top. It is predictable while still being batshit insane. The characters are cardboard, the rules of the world don’t make sense, there are heavy misogynistic undercurrents running through the narrative, and the CGI doesn’t quite meet the demands the film places on it.
And I loved every second of it.
Let’s be clear, I won’t call “Horns” a “good” movie. But it demands to be seen. It is practically staring you down and daring you to avoid it. The film is part young adult romance, part torture porn, part quirky indie-style project and part surrealist horror. It keeps up a brave front by pretending to make sense, by pretending that the choices it is making when telling this story are cohesive, but they aren’t, and the resulting mess is glorious. For this reason, I won’t even call this movie a “bad” film. It’s too interesting to be “bad”. For reasons I can’t quite explain, I want to own this movie and bring it out at parties when the energy starts to run low.
I can’t pin all of the credit on Daniel Radcliffe, but he is a large part of it. I’m always excited to see Radcliffe in things and glad that when choosing roles he tends to go for the weirder, unpolished choice instead of the conventional one. He’s well on his way to solidifying a reputation as a risk-taker in the film world, and I hope it pays off for him. That said, his performance was well-suited to this film: bombastic, emotional and at times off-putting. You can say that for all the actors, really, all of whom put their souls into bringing their roles to life, even when their characters didn’t seem to serve a purpose.
Unfortunately for “Horns”, the script is working against it every step of the way. Really, this film turned out as well as it could have with such a meandering and at times senseless plot. The film shines when it embraces the evil, as Ig does, and commits wholeheartedly to burning itself into your brain.
Perhaps this review doesn’t make much sense either. But you’ll take from it what you need to. Like I said, you already know if you’ll enjoy “Horns”.
DRINK:
Try the Cherry Bomb cocktail. A semi-important plot point revolves around cherry bombs.
POSSIBLE RULES:
-Drink whenever you notice that Ig's horns have grown
-Drink whenever someone falls under the influence of the horns
-Drink for religious or satanic imagery
-More specifically, drink whenever you see Merrin's cross
-Drink when something breaks
This review was written by Hollis Beck (Krissy Pappau). "Horns" is produced by Red Granite Pictures and Mandalay Pictures, and distributed by Dimension Films. The film is rated "R" with a runtime of 120 minutes.
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