{"id":67709,"date":"2014-10-29T09:53:07","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T09:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=67709"},"modified":"2014-10-29T10:51:14","modified_gmt":"2014-10-29T10:51:14","slug":"horns-film-review-daniel-radcliffe-goes-to-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/reviews\/horns-film-review-daniel-radcliffe-goes-to-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"Horns film review: You’re a killer, Harry!"},"content":{"rendered":"

With director Alexandre Aja trying to shake off his horror roots, and Daniel Radcliffe still doing his best to lose the boy wizard tag, Horns<\/strong><\/em> is a film with a lot riding on it. It has moments of broad comedy side-by-side with horror, romance alongside religious iconography, it both condemns and condones violent retribution. Essentially, it\u2019s a film that, at times, doesn\u2019t quite know what it wants to be.<\/p>\n

But when it hits upon something that works, it scores big. When innocent murder suspect Ig (Radcliffe) first sprouts horns, a trip to the doctor\u2019s surgery takes a blackly hilarious look at the inconvenient side of compelling people to tell their deepest truths. When Aja revels in the guilt-free distribution of poetic justice, there are some gory and impressive set pieces. Radcliffe shines both as the bewildered, newly behorned Ig and as the devilish persuader.<\/p>\n

But where Radcliffe \u2013 and the film \u2013 falls down is in the turn towards a moral core. We see Ig grieve for girlfriend Merrin, but there\u2019s little sense of his truly troubled soul. Joe Anderson, who plays Ig\u2019s brother Terry, turns in a brilliant performance wrought with the sort of inner turmoil that would have been better suited to Ig.<\/p>\n

The film is also entirely predictable, even for people who haven\u2019t read Joe Hill\u2019s original book. There\u2019s not a single plot twist that isn\u2019t sign-posted half a mile back.<\/p>\n

That said, the film is really enjoyable. It looks great, adopting a tone somewhere between magic realism and the Gothic. Ig\u2019s horns and costume combo are the stuff of a cosplayer\u2019s fantasy and the cinematography is gorgeous. It sounds great too, with a soundtrack ranging from Bowie to Manson.<\/p>\n

Juno Temple is underused, but as luminous as the dead girlfriend is generally supposed to be. Radcliffe continues to grow as an actor, and makes for a charismatic, easy-to-root-for leading man. Horns<\/strong><\/em> gets slightly lost and finds itself at an overly convenient ending, but along the way it has an awful lot of fun \u2013 and makes room for pathos, too.\"Horns<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Check out what we though of The Hills Have Eyes director Alexandre Aja’s Joe Hill adap<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":67711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[2615,8],"tags":[2044,2029,1952],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Horns-4.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67709"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}