• Home
  • Movie News
  • Movie Trailers
  • Reviews
    • Cinema Reviews
    • Home Entertainment Reviews
      • Blu-ray Review
      • DVD Review
  • Competitions
  • Features
    • Interview

Movie Muser

Have your say about cinema

Horns (DVD) – Daniel Radcliffe has a horny problem

18th March 2015 By Tim Isaac


Horns is a certainly a bit of an odd film, not least because it can’t quite decide what it is – comedy, horror, fable, fantasy, thriller, murder mystery, drama – flitting between them all with little sense of consistency. It’s probably this difficulty in pigeonholing the movie that has limited its audience so far, but in many ways that’s a shame, as while very uneven it is oddly entertaining and just a little beguiling.

Daniel Radcliffe is Ig Perrish, whose girlfriend (Juno Temple) has been murdered and everyone in his small town has decided he’s the killer, despite there not being enough evidence to charge him with anything. Things get a little bizarre when he wakes up one morning to discover he’s grown horns out of his forehead, and that he now has the power to get people to admit to all the things they’d normally keep hidden away (he discovers a lot of these things involve what they’d really like to do to him, as they believe he’s gotten away with murder).

Ig quickly realises that this bizarre turn of events may give him the opportunity to find who the real murderer is, as if he gets to the right person, they won’t be able to help themselves but to confess.

It’s an odd idea but a potentially fascinating one. Horns knows that it has massive amounts of potential and it certainly tries to explore Ig’s horny problem, even if it does it in a rather uneven way. One moments it’s playing it as broad comedy where it feels almost as if it’s fallen into a Kafka-esque absurdist comedy fantasy, and the next it’s turned much darker and more disturbing, before throwing in some slightly confused religious ideas about vengeance.

Horns never quite figures out what it’s doing with all these things, but I nevertheless enjoyed it, helped by Radcliffe, who handles the movie’s oddities extremely well and keeps you on side no matter what weirdness is surrounding him. It’s also true that while the murder mystery isn’t exactly the most complex of whodunits, it’s well done and acts as a good spine to help keep the movie on track. It also has quite a few extremely well done scenes, particularly those involving Ig having no choice but to hear the unvarnished truth from all those he meets.

Things go completely over the top at the end when it tries to bring its themes and ideas to fruition. Because it’s not 100% sure what those ideas are, it comes across as overblown and more than a little silly. Thankfully what’s gone before is good enough that this isn’t a complete disaster.

It’s also a little odd that despite being set in America, it has a largely British cast (Daniel Radcliffe, Juno Temple, Joe Anderson & Max Minghella), a French director (Alexandre Aja) and was filmed in Canada. It’s certainly very international but it is a little peculiar.

Ultimately despite being enjoyable it’s difficult not to feel that Horns is a little bit of a missed opportunity as the premise offers so much potential for a movie that is both entertaining, complex and intellectually fascinating. It manages the first of those but rather botches the other two despite putting in plenty of effort.

Overall Verdict: Horns has quite a few problems and could have done with a stronger sense of what it was doing and why its oddities are necessary, but even so it pulls you in and keeps you wondering what’s go to happen even while you wonder whether you ought to care.

Special Features:
Behind The Scenes
Interviews

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

Related

CHECK OUT THESE RELATED ARCHIVES:

Filed Under: DVD Review

Search this site…

Get Social

RSSTwitterFacebook

Get new posts by e-mail

Get the latest in our daily e-mail

Latest Cinema & Home Ent. Reviews

Mortal Engines (Cinema Review)

Anna and the Apocalypse (Cinema Review)

Suspiria (Cinema Review)

Overlord (Cinema Review)

King of Thieves (Cinema Review)

Isle of Dogs (DVD Review)

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Cinema Review)

Tomb Raider (Blu-ray Review)

The Bridge 4 (DVD Review)

My Friend Dahmer (Cinema Review)

Latest News & Trailers

Detective Pikachu Trailer – Pokemon is going live action with Ryan Reynolds

Toy Story 4 Teaser Trailer – Woody & the gang are coming back once more

Aladdin Teaser Trailer – Guy Ritchie directs Disney’s latest live-action adaptation

New Glass Trailer – The worlds of Unbreakable and Split meet

Aquaman Extended Trailer – Jason Momoa goes to war under the seas against Patrick Wilson

New Overlord Trailer – Soldiers take on Nazi-created zombies in the JJ Abrams produced movie

The Mule Trailer – Clint Eastwood is an octogenarian drug runner opposite Bradley Cooper

Vice Trailer – Christian Bale transforms into former Vice President Dick Cheney

Mary Queen of Scots Trailer – Saoirse Ronan & Margot Robbie get Elizabethan

New Mortal Engines Trailer – London is literally on the move in the steampunk fantasy

Handpicked MediaHandpicked MediaCopyright © 2025 Muser Media · Powered by WordPress & Genesis Framework · Log in
Movie Muser is a member of The Handpicked Media network

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT