Horns (2013)
Directed by Alexandre Aja
In the aftermath of his girlfriend's mysterious death, a young man awakens to strange horns sprouting from his temples.
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3 films that influenced Horns
What critics say influenced Horns
Though “Horns” doesn’t follow the paces of any specific genre, blending everything from tongue-in-cheek supernatural horror to grounded “Stand by Me”-style coming-of-age scenes (including a terrific near-death encounter on a log slide), the plot essentially reduces to that of just another routine procedural: Who killed Merrin?
A long flashback of Ig, his brother Terry and their best friend Lou recalls the pubescent taunting and near-tragedies of Stand by Me, the movie made of King's story "The Body."
There are even scenes of adolescent camaraderie that parallel Stand By Me and its ilk, similar to what J.J. Abrams slung together with his young cast in Super 8. Horns may take many diversions, but they never feel like they’re spliced in from another movie.
Both urges — the fondness for crude "Creepshow" morality tales, the sentimental "Stand By Me" kid drama — seem awfully Stephen King.
A series of flashbacks to his childhood, when he first meets Temple’s character, trade the humorous implications of the contemporary scenes for a fairy tale-like nostalgia trip that calls to mind “Stand By Me.”
Flashback sequences involving a group of childhood friends may seem familiar to fans of “Stand by Me.”
Horns aims higher, handing Aja the upmarket London-born actors Radcliffe, Minghella and Temple — all nicely attuned to the cramped gestures and speech patterns of the Pacific Northwest — and the illustrious cinematographer Frederick Elmes, who shot Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart for David Lynch and, recently, the four-hour drama Olive Kitteridge , to be shown on HBO Nov. 2nd and 3rd.
(Heather Graham’s small role as a diner waitress, and the beautiful cinematography by Blue Velvet and Wild At Heart DP Frederick Elmes, both back up that impression.
There are even scenes of adolescent camaraderie that parallel Stand By Me and its ilk, similar to what J.J. Abrams slung together with his young cast in Super 8. Horns may take many diversions, but they never feel like they’re spliced in from another movie.