Love makes demons of everyone: Quite literally in Iggy Perrish’s case. “Horns” released on Friday in the United States, and if the viewer can get past the shocking gore and psychological horror, this indie movie is worth the watch.

“Horns” starts off like a stereotypical mystery thriller: First a romance scene between two love birds, and then a sharp transition to the girl’s murder investigation, with the boyfriend in the center of the heat. 

The only variant is Iggy (Daniel Radcliffe) who is obviously innocent, and the movie’s plot is shown through his experiences with proving his innocence. 

The clear difference between a normal murder thriller and this one is in the first quarter of the movie. Iggy begins to sprout devil’s horns out of his forehead. After this occurrence, every encounter with other people Iggy has is completely turned into a horribly honest, and most of the time gruesome, conversation which is the effect of the horns on other people. These outbursts by others seem completely governed by the seven deadly sins. 

In one scene, his own brother Terry Perrish (Joe Anderson) gives away that he was the first to discover Iggy’s girlfriend Merrin’s (Juno Temple) dead body in the forest, but he didn’t report it to the police because he was afraid of being a suspect. 

Even when his own little brother was put to the heat for it, Terry still hid the truth, showing the sin of greed. Another scene depicting a sin was a conversation with Iggy’s father where he tells Iggy he was envious of the love Iggy and Merrin shared and his “favorite thing about you (Iggy) was her.” This clearly shows the sin of envy, especially when he tells his son he believes he murdered her and can never forgive Iggy for taking Merrin away.

Through the course of the movie, the search by Iggy to find Merrin’s killer becomes more intense due to the frequent flashbacks the audience gets to witness with Iggy. 

The most heart-wrenching flashback was of their love growing from childhood into adulthood through a tree house they shared. Many of Iggy’s memories of Merrin are wrapped up in their magic little spot in the woods; which also happened to be the scene of Merrin’s murder. 

The further into the movie the viewer gets, the stranger, gruesomer, and more fantastical the events become, however, the storyline is absolutely engrossing. The viewer falls in love with Merrin through Iggy’s memories, and feels his pain through each painstaking event he has to bear through. 

The only downside is the questions the audience is left with at the end of the movie. 

The horns, the sins play in the events and the whole religious aspect of the movie is never fully explained and never came full circle in the end. The mystery of Merrin’s death, however heartbreaking, awful and tragic it is, is solved, but the audience will never get answers to the mysteries of their own.

Many viewers of this movie flocked to it due to the attraction of the main actor, Radcliffe, known for his role as Harry Potter.

His acting style in this movie is radically different from that of “Harry Potter,” but it could be argued that his performance in “Horns” better portrayed his acting style as he had no huge expectation to fill with his character, so he made it his own. 

Whether the choice to see this movie is for the actor, or for the bizarre, intriguing story, it’s worth giving it a shot. In no means will this movie be everyone’s favorite, and it will most likely only appeal to a certain niche of viewers. However, if one is looking for a movie to watch while feeling genre adventurous, this is the one.