Is Horns Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot

Waking up with accessories

Ignatius "Ig" Perrish is the prime suspect after his girlfriend, Merrin Williams, is found murdered, and nobody in town believes he is innocent. He retreats to his parents' house, where his brother Terry also lives, to hide from the press. Merrin's father leads a vigil and makes clear he thinks Ig did it. Afterward Ig drinks too much, urinates on Merrin's memorial and ends up in bed with a friend. By morning there is a pair of horns growing out of his head. They come with a power: anyone near him blurts out their darkest secrets and desires, and he can tell them to act on them.

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A cherry bomb and a very honest bar

While seeing a doctor about the horns, Ig goes under anesthesia and dreams about his childhood. As a boy he first meets Merrin after she breaks her necklace in church. He wins a cherry bomb on a dangerous dare, nearly drowns, and is rescued by his friend Lee Tourneau, who is now a lawyer. Lee fixes the necklace, Ig trades the cherry bomb for it because he wants to hand it back to Merrin himself, and the cherry bomb goes off in Lee's hand and takes two of his fingers. Ig and Merrin fall in love and spend time in a treehouse in the woods. Back in the present, the horns get Ig's mother to admit that she no longer wants him as a son, and his father says Ig is worthless without Merrin and that he helped a friend burn down the lab running the DNA tests. In a bar parking lot Ig starts a brawl with reporters, and inside, people confess secrets until the owner burns the building down for the insurance.

Terry has been holding a rock this whole time

One confession tells Ig that the new witness works as a waitress at the diner where Merrin ended things with him the night she died. She admits she invented her story to become famous. Terry then tells Ig that he drove Merrin from the diner, and when Ig touches him he sees the night play out: Merrin climbed out of the car partway home and ran off into the woods, while Terry passed out, and the next morning he woke up holding a bloody rock next to Merrin's body under the treehouse. He ran because he was afraid of being blamed. Ig beats Terry up and is arrested by Officer Eric Hannity, another childhood friend, then gets out of jail the next day thanks to Lee. Ig spots Merrin's cross necklace, and Lee tells him Ig does not know everything about him and Merrin.

The necklace was a very good hat

That night snakes start following Ig around, and he uses them against the waitress. He also gets Eric to admit his crush on his police partner, who turns out to feel the same, and makes Terry overdose on drugs so that Terry has to relive Merrin's death. At the docks Ig pulls the necklace off Lee and realizes that wearing it is the only reason Lee could not see the horns. Exposed to them, Lee confesses to killing Merrin. This is the hardest scene in the movie, it comes late, and it is told in flashbacks while Lee talks. Lee was in love with Merrin and jealous of Ig since childhood. He followed her into the woods, assaulted her when she said she loved Ig more than anyone, killed her with a rock, took her necklace, and planted the rock on Terry. Then Lee overpowers Ig and sets him on fire in his car, and Ig drives into the bay. Lee tells everyone that Ig confessed and killed himself. The horns let Ig survive, badly burned.

A lockbox with an excuse inside

Merrin's father now believes Ig is innocent and hands him the key to her lockbox. Ig puts on her cross, and his body is restored and the horns vanish. Inside the lockbox is a note from Merrin. She knew a proposal was coming, but she had cancer, was dying, and did not want to put him through that, so she drove him off by pretending she loved someone else. That explains the breakup at the diner on the night she died, and it leaves Ig with a very different picture of the last conversation he had with her.