Horns (2013)

*** out of ****

Imagine that the love of your life broke up with you on the night you were going to propose to her. Then suppose that as you went off that night, getting hammered and sleeping in your car in a parking lot, she was somewhere being raped and murdered and left to die in the woods. Further imagine that every single person in your town, including your family, believe you are the killer. You'd be imagining yourself in a pretty bad spot.

But that is exactly where Iggy Perrish (Daniel Radcliffe) finds himself at the beginning of “Horns”, a really terrific adaptation of Joe Hill's intriguing novel. His girlfriend had been Merrin (Juno Temple), and there isn't enough evidence to convict or clear him of her murder because the forensics lab where the DNA evidence was being analyzed burned down before any results were in. As a result he drinks too much and understandably has all kinds of self loathing issues.

But one morning he wakes up, after a blackout drunk the night before which he can't remember at all..... with horns. Real devil horns growing out of the top of his head. They have nerves and blood, and Ig is sensibly mystified about and terrified of them. But now that he has them, something weird starts to happen; everyone he now talks to starts to confess their deepest, darkest desires to him. At the doctor's office the mother of a screaming child tells him about her desire to leave the child and screw her golf pro. The receptionist tells him about her craving to berate that mother and beat the crap out of her. The doctor himself tells Ig he wants to crush up some Oxycodon and “get fucked up”, and also how he wants to sexually assault one of his daughter's friends.

And NOBODY appears to think the horns are especially weird. It seems everyone kind of forgets about them as soon as they aren't looking at them anymore. So Ig decides he can use this odd new power to get people to talk about the night Merrin was killed and hopefully find out what really happened.

What “Horns” ends up being is sort of a supernatural whodunnit, and the story gets pretty interesting. I think it would have been an intriguing film even without the horns, but that aspect makes it a pretty unique endeavor. Daniel Radcliffe is actually incredibly good in the lead role, not only in his ability to pull off a perfect American accent, but in his authenticity as the tormented Ig. His grief over Merrin's murder, his confusion about the horns, his rage in his desire to find the killer, his horror at learning everyone's darkest desires....even his fiendish joy in using his new influence against people he doesn't like – Radcliffe has it all down seamlessly. A performance worthy of note.

This movie was clearly a smaller project than most popular releases, but is surely one of the more unique stories we've seen on the screen recently. An absorbing plotline, a bunch of nice performances and solid production make this one really worthwhile. If you've read the novel you may be a bit unhappy with some of the changes made, but I found those all pretty minor and necessary to make the film easier to follow.

Overall a really enjoyable movie – well worth watching if you stumble across it.