Daniel Radcliffe has certainly shown that he at least has the strive to want to show himself as an actor’s actor. Post-The Boy Who Lived film franchise, he’s since attached himself to no shortage of consistently varied and unexpected roles and projects, including a serviceable 2011 run on Broadway in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” (and before that, dropping his Wizarding robes in the exposing 2008 stage play “Equus”), playing the homosexual Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in 2013’s Kill Your Darlings, and now, a broody small-town deadbeat who is believed to have killed his ex-girlfriend. Oh yeah- and he weirdly grows horns through his head (or maybe it’s not weird? It’s to the movie’s discredit that such a distinction can’t be made) in the aptly titled, Horns.

Here, Radcliffe’s character isn’t so much as outright weird (until he transforms fully into an impressively CGI’d Sabbatic goat in the climactic third act),as is the whole circus show around him, which would have been a whole lot more fun if the film didn’t suffer from such an identity crisis, wishing itself to be half black-comedy and half weepy romance-flick. Radcliffe plays Ig Parrish, whose very first steps out of his front door is met with hate-spewing townspeople and frenzied news media, all of whom out for his blood, believing him to be responsible for the death of their beloved small town beauty, the ever-lovely Merrin (Juno Temple), who also happened to be his ex-girlfriend and assumed soul mate. After a full day of frustrations in shouting back his innocence and personal heartbreak in the matter (of which Radcliffe once again tries to awkwardly plow ahead with an unconvincing American accent,) he decides to lose himself with his drink and a one-night stand with the local punk rock chick bartender. As he wakes up the next morning, however, he finds much to his surprise, the somewhat sprawling of bumps nearly protruding through the frontal lobes of his skull. What would be enough to kick-start a horror movie right then and there is instead flipped for comedy, as his hookup immediately (and weirdly) begins to spill her guts – how she wants to eat “all” of the donuts on the coffee table, and very oddly, begins to shove them one by one, all in her mouth, much to Ig’s confusion.

So the stage is set for what appears to be the game of the movie: Ig walks around through the town, and, except for everyone freaking out that the Devil incarnate is now literally amongst them, the entire general public not only reveals their complete indifference to the horns, as they grow bigger and more bestial by the hour, but are invoked to act on their own deepest and darkest of self-serving impulses in highly theatrical and politically incorrect fashion. Which does in fact consistently happen- we see the doctor that he goes to for immediate surgery impulsively begin to huff the anesthesia and philander with his nurse right there in the surgical room, as well as a gaggle of news reporters entering into a playground fistfight for an exclusive interview with Ig, which make for the film’s more enjoyable and worthwhile moments. Except this doesn’t happen- at least not in a parade of charades that might have made for a much more entertaining time. No, this is not that movie. It’s something that casts a much wider net, and with such a vast and rich world that the movie attempts to explain and explore, these moments feel even more out of place in the larger context.

What really derails the film is the relentless framing as being a fantasy film, and acts on sweeping romance reminiscent of a Guillermo del Toro inspiration, which isn’t dialed in nearly enough to be successful here.

What follows, or rather what is so awkwardly intercut between these odd happenings, is an entire emotional construction that attempts to breed itself as equal parts romance. With flashback storytelling, which introduces his childhood friends, including his more loved older brother Terry (the entertainingly squirrely Joe Anderson) and best friend and eventual Defense Attorney (pro-bono) Lee Tourneau (Max Minghella), we are bogged down with a clunky and ineffective back story that so desperately wants to show the origins of his budding relationship with Merrin. We then see Ig and Merrin in a truly fantastical montage of true love-ing in their hideaway forest and storybook tree house, as well all of their googly-eye times together. After her death, we proceed to get a descent into drunken lovelorn obtuseness, a cacophony of genre and intended feeling that would be fun if it weren’t akin to a gigantic eye roll.

What really derails the film is the relentless framing as being a fantasy film, and acts on sweeping romance reminiscent of a Guillermo del Toro inspiration, which isn’t dialed in nearly enough to be successful here. Although director Alexandre Aja is no stranger to handling reality-blending (and bending) narrative, as seen with 2006’s The Hills Have Eyes and 2010’s Piranha 3-D (as well as writing the 2012 Elijah Wood-starrer Maniac), he seems to dizzy himself up and lose himself in the show. Based off of the novel of the same name, written by Joe Hill, we might’ve gotten a more cohesive textual reading if we had just read the book instead. Things might have all leveled out a bit more, and we might have even understood that Ig’s (possibly) wrongful accusation by a crazed public might illustrate a larger symbolism of hypocrisy in realizing personal sins and those who don’t acknowledge it, crucifying a guy who they all just deem to be guilty/evil. Or it might have come across as a more sentimental take at love lost, and of the tortured inner spirit of a man losing the love of his life. But when you have a film that wishes to be all things at all times, especially in a more literal and more unforgiving cinematic form where the abstract needs to be nailed down in a completely visual sense, it’s a wonder that nobody could express the elephant in the room (or the horns on the forehead) that the story just needed to pick a tone and stick with it.

Horns is in theaters this Friday.