Review: "Horns"

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.