AJA, Alexandre, Dir., “Horns”, Red Granite/Mandalay Pictures,
2014.
Awhile
ago, I wrote a review of the book upon which this film is based and blithely
commented that I would be posting a summation of the movie once it came out.
Well, it’s been quite a few months since the movie was released and it’s just
now, after I found the DVD marked down to peanuts at the local supermarket,
that I’m getting around - not only to seeing it - but to sharing my thoughts
about it. Not that I expect anyone’s been hanging out for my opinions...
I
quite like Joe Hill’s stuff. I thought this book would have been better as a short
story, but it wasn’t a total disaster – it just felt a little bit padded in places.
Not near as bad as Heart-Shaped Box,
but not as finished as NOS4R2. My
instincts before watching the film were that the concept would work excellently
as a movie and in that sense, I wasn’t wrong. It’s just that, when a director
gets hold of someone else’s material, they like to leave their fingerprints all
over it. And not necessarily in a good way.
Fortunately,
the first thing that director Alexandre Aja excised from the concept were all
the bad puns and sly in-jokes which tend to pepper all of Joe Hill’s material,
whenever it starts to feel like he’s getting a little bored – no “Devil in a
Blue Dress” riffs in this iteration. As well, the heavenly iconography, which
was a little too much ‘in your face’ in the book, is scaled right back – for instance,
in the book it’s pointed out to the reader that Ig Perrish’s car is a Gremlin;
in the film, either you can spot that make of vehicle, or you can’t: it doesn’t
make a difference. This being said, Aja makes certain judgement calls about Ig’s
status as a human being and turns him into an angel at one point, which was
just a little too far-fetched. Not what Hill intended; not what the movie
needed.
Other
things to go were the fact that fire cures Ig of all damage: in the movie, it
just makes him more horrific-looking. The snakes are still involved and Aja
takes care of them where Hill didn’t – no reptilian deaths in this flick,
which, for my money, was a good change from the source material.
In
the movie, Ig doesn’t put his grandmother on the top of a hill in her
wheelchair and release the brake; the town priest is somehow immune to most of
Ig’s capabilities; and Lee Torneau is somehow oblivious to the change in his
former best friend - until he loses his protective crucifix. Most of these
elements have been trimmed to bring the movie under time-limits, but they also serve
to slightly modify Hill’s vision. Purists will be a little upset at these
modifications: it’s nowhere near the kind of manhandling that “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” was
put through, but it is – somewhat – noticeable. The scene with the doughnuts
has survived intact, you’ll be pleased to know.
What
Aja focuses on, and what holds the viewers’ attention is the romance which is
at the heart of the film. I was not convinced that Daniel Radcliffe was the
best choice for Ig Perrish, but, as it turns out, he does a very creditable
job. The chemistry he shares with Juno Temple as Merrin is very strong and
creates a solid centre for the action. But this story is not just a romance
film: there’s a murder mystery and a bunch of black comedy all bound together
with some rather full-on body horror as well. All of these facets are given
their moment to shine, along with a variety of excellent incidents – mostly taken
from the novel – which help to underscore the nightmare in which the lead
character finds himself: the point where Ig’s mum tells him that she wishes he
would “go away so that she can be happy again”, is particularly wounding.
Sometimes you get to hear stuff that you’d rather not when your superpower is
to learn everyone’s darkest desires...
One
thing the film does very well is to ground the story in a real-world
environment. Art direction, special effects, make-up and costuming have all
rigorously removed or toned-down the garish aspects of the novel and have created
a seamless whole. In the book, Ig’s horns are cartoon-y and glowing; in the
film they’re more animalistic and ‘natural-looking’. The cold,
logging-community backdrop to the action works very well too, removing some
artificiality that was present in Hill’s view of the local community. The
in-jokes and wordplay that pepper the novel are less garish when they’re just
things that you may notice – or not - in passing: because Hill drags them into
the spotlight so often in the book version, they get old fairly quickly. What
were jaw-grinding puns in one iteration have become “easter eggs” in another,
and that’s for the best.
Final
analysis? Hard to say. The movie takes out all the rough edges that Hill should’ve
smoothed over before going to print; however, the simplistic streamlining of
the film’s morality (and the visual depictions thereof) are not welcome. I had
heard that Radcliffe’s American accent was patchy, but nothing popped out to
alarm me (and neither did that of any of the rest of the cast, most of which
seemed to be British). In short, the film loses out because it can’t be as
complex as the source material; it wins because it keeps its focus, which is
what Hill should have done. It’s a solid romp and its heart is in the right
place (probably in an appropriately-formed box).
Four
tentacled horrors.
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