TW/ sexual abuse/ assault

By mid-July, I decided to have a “summerween” by reading something “dark”. I can’t remember if I told you all that I gathered many exciting books from my sister’s shelf at the beginning of the year, and I’m too lazy to look at older stories. One of those books was Horns by New York Times bestselling author Joe Hill. It was published in the early 2010s, but I have not heard from it. When I was about 40 pages in, I realized it was Daniel Radcliffe on the book cover. That’s when I noticed that on the cover, all the way on top, it has been stated that the book is now a major motion picture. My brain was on a summer break, for real.
I finished the book first and then watched the movie. I had a hard time imagining Daniel Radcliffe with horns without laughing. How will they put that in a film without it looking ridiculous?

What’s the story?

Horns tells the story of a broken man, Ig, played by Daniel Radcliffe, who lost the love of his life a year before. He didn’t simply lose her. She was sexually assaulted and brutally murdered. The worst part was that everybody, well, most people, thought that he did it. Witnesses divulged that Ig was the last to see Merrin, Ig’s girl, alive. It wasn’t true, however. So, who murdered Merrin, and why?

What did I like about the book?

For starters, it’s pretty easy to read. Joe doesn’t use unnecessary difficult words to tell the story. The characters are written with a lot of depth, and the way Joe describes them in the book makes it effortless to imagine them in your head. The story is written in a flash forward, so the reader will get a glimpse of the gruesome event that occurred a year before. Throughout the book, however, Joe will take the reader continuously back in time and then back to the present. I liked that, and for some, those kinds of books might be difficult to read, but not Horns. You’ll keep reading like your life depends on it and won’t want to put the book down.

What did I dislike about the book?

I think everybody who’s read the book can agree that Lee is a real piece of chicken poop. Those naggy types that you step on just before you get into the house. I disliked nothing about the book, but Joe dragged the story a bit at the end. Maybe it’s just me, but that is how I felt reading those last pages. I wanted it to be over so I could move on, mainly because the reader would sense that the story would not have a happy ending. Ig and Merrin will be together, but I wish Lee would suffer more for what he did.

Book vs. movie

Consisting of 435 pages, Horns tells a twisted story about true love and miserable grieving pain. The film lasts for 2 hours and 3 minutes. The movie doesn’t tell the story as beautifully as the book. I liked the in-depth details of the earlier stages of Ig and Merrin’s love in the book. In the movie, they explain how they meet, which is the same as in the book, but the movie doesn’t illustrate the activities Ig and Merrin used to do together and how they have been inseparable ever since they met. Those details matter because the story will play more emotionally on the reader if they know all those tiny details about their bond and love for each other.

Ig leaves Merrin at the diner after a huge fight and break-up. Ig landed his dream job and headed to London the next day. Merrin was supposed to join him later on. A day before his departure, Merris tells Ig she wants him to see other people. They’ve been dating for a long while, and Merrin told him that they, mostly Ig, must explore what they like and that it’s weird that they’ve only been with each other. Of course, this news makes Ig furious, and he immediately thinks that Merrin has been cheating on him or that a guy is already waiting for her.

In the book, Merrin gets picked up by Lee and Ig’s brother Terry; however, in the movie, Terry is the one who gives Merrin a ride. Terry seemed drunk in the film, but if I’m not mistaken, he was high in the book. In the movie, Terry stops near the place where Merrin took her last breath, well, where it was stolen from her by someone who doesn’t know the definition of consent. In the book, both Lee and Terry pick up Merrin at the diner, where she is standing in the cold rain.

The last days of Lee’s mother were briefly described in the book but not mentioned in the movie. She was tortured to death by Lee. At the last stage of her life, she started to look like a bird because she was fragile. Lee didn’t nourish her on purpose, leaving her in the heat with too many blankets and no water. Lee was a true monster, and I think that that didn’t fully come through in the movie. Yes, he sexually assaulted and murdered Merrin. That’s what monsters do, but his pathetic self could have been better portrayed in the film.

Merrin’s sister dies of breast cancer in the book. A disease that will knock on Merrin’s door, too, but we all know that that’s not what will kill her. In the movie, it was Merrin’s mom whose faith was eaten by cancer. It was cancer that made Merrin decide to break up with Ig, but for some reason, Lee, who was also a friend of Merrin, thought that Merrin wanted his cock so badly that she decided to break off her long-term relationship with Ig for him. And when Merrin rejected him, the incel freaking flipped and killed her.

What’s with the horns?

When reading the book, I thought the horns were probably some metaphor, but when Ig asked if others could see it too, most of them agreed, except Lee, who was wearing Merrin’s cross. And I sat on the couch thinking that people were lying to Ig’s face about seeing the horns due to sympathy and embarrassment. The horns gave Ig the extraordinary “Eduard Cullen” power. He could hear people’s thoughts, and they weren’t pretty. And that is how Ig came to find out who was responsible for Merrin’s murder (in the book). Despite being able to make people confess their sins, he couldn’t get anything from Lee, but then he discovered that he was wearing Merrin’s cross, protecting him from Ig, the “devil.” At first, Ig thought that it was because Lee was a good person. He was about to discover an unthinkable truth about his best buddy.

What’s with the cross?

Readers will quickly notice that religion is a significant theme in Horns. Ig saw Merrin for the first time in church when she was blinding him with her cross. She was signaling him, trying to get his attention, and she did. Sadly, she was also noticed by somebody else, Lee. Initially, Ig couldn’t fix Merrin’s cross and asked Lee for help. Since Lee also had an interest in Merrin, he wanted to be the one to give her the cross when it was fixed. It was refreshing that Ig stood his ground in the movie and set his boundaries straight. Ig would be the one to give Merrin the cross, but since he developed this special bond with Lee after supposedly saving his life, Ig gave Lee the cherry bomb he earned in a risky dare. That cherry bomb would later be Lee’s disaster.

My first thoughts when watching the movie:

-Holy shit Lee is hot. Where is his “bad” eye? After a few minutes, I got over him. He’s not that hot. In the movie, the cherry bomb didn’t explode in his face but in his hand. He has to wear what seems to be a special glove for his hand.
-Holy shit Merrin’s father is the serial killer from Disturbia. It’s one of my favorite movies, by the way.
-Holy shit. Is that Sabrina Carpenter? Yes, Sabrina plays the role of a young Merrin. I didn’t know she acted.
-I honestly wasn’t expecting to hear ‘Where is my mind?’ by The Pixies in the movie. That caught me off guard, but I liked it. I don’t know if it’s the best song choice. I think ‘Cherry Waves’ by Deftones would have been better.
-Holy shit, he has horns. Yes, this whole horn thing had me laughing in the book. I can’t imagine Daniel Radcliffe with horns, mainly when my brain only associates him with Harry Potter.

Final thoughts

There are too many things going on to take the movie seriously despite the heavy topic. The cursing, the fucking, the freaking ‘If I Had a Heart’ song, the horns, the funny scenes where people confessed their sins, the wings. And don’t watch if you’re terrified of snakes.

Cherry is also a recurring theme throughout this story: Merrin’s hair, the cherry bombs, the blood drive that Ig and Merrin volunteered together, and, eventually, the story’s tragic end. Ig ignites like a cherry bomb at the end but remembers Merrin that he will love her for the rest of his life.

My mom can finally breathe now. She hated the book cover. She thought the book was “the devil.”