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Horns has all of the elements that you’d expect to find in a film released on Halloween. Demonic symbolism? Check. Gruesome murders by an unidentified killer? Check. A horror maestro behind the camera? Check. On paper, Horns meets all of the pre-requisites, however there is more than meets the eye. Deaths are mined for laughs (intentionally), and the film features a tragic love story that gives Romeo & Juliet a run for their money. Horns is a genre mishmash stunningly directed by Piranha 3D’s Alexandre Aja and expertly adapted by Keith Bunin from Joe Hill’s novel.

Daniel Radcliffe stars as an outsider, Ig, who wakes up one morning with horns sprouting from his temples. Peculiarly, no one seems to pay much attention to the protruding spikes, yet strangely, everyone who he comes in contact with can’t help but share their deepest, nastiest secrets. Ig uses his newfound burden of discovering the darkest part in everyone to solve who murdered his childhood girlfriend (an ethereal Juno Temple).

On a press tour for the simultaneous VOD/iTunes/theatrical Halloween release date, I had the chance to sit with the stars Daniel Radcliffe and Juno Temple alongside author Joe Hill (son of Stephen King) to talk about creating their characters, the core of the story, driving with snakes, and why horns make the perfect headwear.

At the core of Horns, there’s such a wonderful story, but then you add the horns and the fantastical elements to it. How much more intriguing did that make this film to you if that had not been there? Would you still have wanted to do this story?

Daniel Radcliffe: You made a great point. Without all of the amazing symbolic, visual elements to it, it’s a great story. It’s a love story. It’s an idealized story of young lovers who grew up and got to be together, but then they fell away, which is in of itself a compelling enough story. I think when you add the elements of the horns and the powers that the horns give him, that brings an extra visual element of excitement, but to me I’ve always enjoyed magical realism and that’s how I viewed this script originally as being the whole world grounded in a very deep reality with this one extraordinary, insane thing happening in the middle of it.

Juno Temple: I agree. As my character is in the [back]story, she is never around the horns. She never meets the horns. But I think the love story to me was so important in this weird Romeo and Juliet way. They are never going to be together and you know that from the beginning of the film, but my God, you wish they ended up together even though it’s not possible. So the horns to me added this element of, “Yeah, he’s going to figure out what happened to her now,” so it’s almost like this blessing that gets added onto this story that is a fantastical love story. And if the characters didn’t meet the fate they did, this could be a love story forever and that is a really great part of the script and such a great base for this magical realism.

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