Movie Review: Horns (2013)

I went into this having read one of Joe Hill's books before(^not this one!).  The book I read was this badass ghost story called Heart Shaped Box that was dark and funny and enthralling.  I had the same type of expectations for this movie and was not disappointed.  This twisty tale is about a man who gets accused of murdering his own girlfriend and then sprouts horns that make everyone around him brutally honest.  He then decides to use his new powers to find out who really murdered his girl.

He's in a bad place because it's obvious that she was pretty well the only thing he had going right in his life.  You continue to be absorbed for a few reasons.  Firstly, it looks like several people, including the main character, Ig, may have killed his girlfriend.  Secondly, you can't wait to see what random people are going to say to him because they've lost all their filters due to his magical "truth" horns.  It's hi-larious and so wrong in the best way.

You know how in most movies there's a good guy and a bad guy?  Well, in this one, the hero is also the villain.  I can't even tell you what's so cool about that-it just is.  You really want him to not be the killer, but it's not because he's a wonderful person.  It's because he's in so much pain and there's something inherently layered about that.

MEMORABLE SCENE:

Yeah, that's gonna have to be the bar/reporter scene.  It's right after he realizes the best way to use his newfound 'gift' and it's brilliant.  You know, if you like violence and stuff.

QUOTE:

Ig Perrish: "People say you should always do the right thing, but sometimes there is no right thing.  And then, you just have to pick the sin you can live with."

RATING:

Hell, yes!  This one gets 9 out of 10 for being one of the few movies I've had a hard time attaching to any specific genre.

EXTRAS:

Did you watch The Woman in Black (2012)?  It was the first movie Daniel Radcliffe did after the Harry Potter series and I was not a fan.  Okay, so it wasn't terrible, but I couldn't help but think "Oh, look, it's Harry Potter in a ghost story" the whole time.  Once he got to Horns, though, he killed it.  I didn't think about his past films once and his American accent was not bad at all.  All belief was successfully suspended.  I can't wait to see what he'll do in later films.