In the aftermath of his girlfriend's mysterious death, a young man awakens to strange horns sprouting from his temples.
Seems most likely to please intense adolescents.
Sweetness and splatter, romance and horror, comedy, fantasy... Alexandre Aja’s movie boldly mixes flavours, to satisfying effect. Radcliffe, meanwhile, again proves he’s at home with the dark arts.
Long-shelved, the final product never lives up to the promise of its contemporary-Grimm-brothers conceit.
It shouldn't work, but it does.
Ultimately this teen horror lacks any real hiss or bite.
Horns’ tonal fluctuations undermine its attempted emotional heft.
Alexandre Aja's sprawling, wildly uneven film suffers from its continual shifts in storytelling style. It's at its best as a Twin Peaks-style mystery with supernatural elements.
There are a few laughs and sharp moments, but this film outstays its precarious welcome by about half an hour and strays into some weirdly humourless YA romance territory.
A very strange film in which hints of Joe Orton comedy clash with bursts of special-effects and none of it makes a great deal of sense. We all understand that Radcliffe wants to try different things but there are limits.
It’s entertainingly bonkers and Radcliffe gives it his all.
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.
Daniel Radcliffe
General release. Check local listings for show times.
RSS feed of Cinema reviews