Horns is a movie adapted from Joe Hill’s superb novel, starring Daniel Radcliffe in what many critics are calling the performance of his career, and directed by well-known horror director Alexandre Aja. The horror press loves it. And you may not get to see it on the big screen.
This is kind of insane. Radcliffe is rapidly demonstrating that there’s more to him, as a movie star, than the boy who lived. Aja has never had a movie tank. So what’s going on?
At a guess, they stuck close to the book. Horns, as a novel, is not shy about dealing with the religious aspects of a character who literally wakes up one day with devil horns growing out of his skull. The book establishes fairly early on that Ig Perrish is, for all intents and purposes, Satan; he knows your deepest, ugliest urges… and can make you act on them.
Where the book goes from there is best left to the reader, but let’s just say that life isn’t easy for anyone, even the walking avatar of the Devil. And that might be where the entire problem is.
The movie has, outside the genre press, gotten middling reviews, which I’m guessing doesn’t help. But it’s clear that the distributors are a little afraid of this one. One of the movies critics keep mentioning is Dogma, which was a difficult movie to say the least, and for many distributors is a total nightmare of a movie.
Hopefully, though, one of them summons the guts and runs with this movie. Even if it is uneven, it’s a horror movie with a different idea, and that doesn’t get enough play on movie screens.