16. Horns (2014)
Daniel Radcliffe seems to be following a similar path to Elijah Wood, choosing small indie titles including horror in order to escape from typecasting. The Harry Potter star previously starred in the creepy ghost story "The Woman In Black" and now he stars in this story of a young man accused of killing his long-term girlfriend.
In actual fact this is not horror at all. It's very much a fantasy film. Albeit one with some fairly graphic violence in places.
While I expected the film to be about everyone demonising the protagonist for his new appearance, it turns out that the horns give him magic powers. I won't reveal exactly how the powers work, but it becomes quite interesting working out the rules on which the powers are based.
I'd have preferred a darker tone, but this probably has the widest appeal of all Alexandre Aja's films so far. (Alexandre Aja directed the remakes of The Hills Have Eyes and Piranha, and he also wrote the remake of Maniac. So far the only original movie of his I've seen is "Mirrors". "Horns" is not really original since it is adapted from a book.)
I had a great time with this film, with the exception of one scene involving a drug overdose. While I understand that the scene was symbolic and the visuals were excellent, there didn't seem to be harsh enough consequences, either physically or emotionally.
I found "Horns" to be well-made and thoroughly enjoyable despite being more of a fantasy film than the horror I was expecting. (At a push, you might argue that it was a monster movie.) It's not the best film of the year, by any means, but I would strongly recommend it all the same.
A+