Now here’s an odd horror hybrid. Daniel Radcliffe, engagingly working the variations between vulnerable and deranged, is agonised Ig (yes, Ig), a DJ accused of murdering his girlfriend, and whose forehead suddenly sprouts a pair of ram-like excrescences. The sight of these appendages brings out the worst in people, who spontaneously reveal their true character, invariably of a stereotypical nature: self-loathing bad girl, bullying cops just waiting to come out of the closet, jazzman with a drug habit…
Cinematographer Frederick Elmes imparts a handsome fairytale polish, but tonally, Horns is a mess. Based on Joe Hill’s novel, it starts as young adult weird romance, then turns into mundane whodunnit before erupting in a blaze of SFX ghoulishness. What director Alexandre Aja fails to maximise is the appealingly off-colour comedy in people’s reactions to the horns: only in spurts does the film achieve an outre flavour of pop Gogol.
