James Conaway

I watched Horns the day after finishing the novel by Joe Hill, which honestly made it difficult to nail down how I was feeling about the movie at times, but also made it easy to compare the two tellings of the story. There are quite a few differences between the book and the movie. Not all of them were bad. A few of the changes were clever and improved certain scenes. I understand the reasoning behind most of the changes made to the plot, but there were several things left out that really bothered me. My favorite part of the novel was the idea of “The Treehouse of the Mind”. This aspect of the story was ignored in the movie. I’m usually able to watch an adaptation of a novel without being overly critical. I’m the type who usually reads the novel before the movie and finds that the novel was a much better story. I acknowledge the difficulty in translating a novel that takes eight hours to read into a two hour movie. Things will be left out. It goes with the territory. What I don’t understand is ignoring the plot point that explains why your main character wakes up with horns growing out of his head. To be fair, if I hadn’t read the novel, I’m sure I would have liked the movie more. I’m also sure, though, that I still would have noticed that one of the biggest questions you have throughout the story is left entirely unanswered.