Horns : Movie Review

Horns is a 2013 American-Canadian dark fantasy thriller film directed by Alexandre Aja, based on Joe Hill's novel of the same name. Daniel Radcliffe stars as a man accused of the rape and murder of his girlfriend (Juno Temple) who uses his newly discovered paranormal abilities in his pursuit to uncover the real killer.

~ Wikipedia

Guest Review by Mehmed Hossein

Not many will agree with me but I find Horns enjoyable; it's a good movie. It is well-paced and has a progressive development. It's a mystery "question-and-answer" movie driven from point A to point B. In other words, the film is "formula-ic" that things are expected as so.

In my personal opinion, most movies that I've watched had gone through the same formula in films, which to me in my taste, are getting more stale. It's the same thing again and again, till I can't tell anymore whether it is good or bad. Either I'm bad at being judge of it, or perhaps I've seen too much to not care all about the small details.

Joe Hill, the son of Stephen King wrote the novel which the movie is based on. Well, I never read the book so I'll be judging it as a normal moviegoer seeing what's presented on screen.

The film has a great first two acts that pulls the viewers in, bringing the curiosity in the questioning phase and explaining mysteries as the story progresses. Unfortunately the Third act is a bit off. Act 3 is the moment Iggy embraces the demon character but he gets killed by the man who murdered his girlfriend. He's a devil, can't he just told the guy to kill himself or something? This is the part where he got himself killed, and he is inexplicably rises from the dead, alive, just because he shunned Christianity in the first place? Despite a downer Third Act, I ended up 'dumbing down' my brain to the end to enjoy the film.

Daniel Radcliffe's acting was impressive; acting as an American boy despite his British background, he managed to pull off the accent well and his range of emotions played greatly you can connect to his character.

Flaw-wise, I think the movie would work well better without the obvious VFX. Mainly of him being a burning devil at the end of the film. People would probably interpret the moment he pulls off the cross to become a devil is consider anti-Semitic.

If you think too hard you won't enjoy the movie. I as a movie-goer, I've dumbed down enough with low expectation and I'm quite pleased with what I've seen here.

I rate this movie: 7/10