Hard Candy

Rated R for: disturbing violent and aberrant sexual content involving a teen, and for language

Running Time: 1 hr, 40 min

Starring: Ellen Page, Patrick Wilson

Rating: One and a half stars [out of four]

On DVD now



I'm going to begin this review with a warning: Due to the nature of this movie, it is almost impossible to write anything about it without giving away the very first twist. If you, for some unknown reason, actually want to watch this barely entertaining film and are afraid of spoiling anything, then stop reading now.

Other than the initial twist, I won't reveal any other spoilers.

Hard Candy is supposed to be one of those psychological, low-budget, no frills cat-and-mouse thrillers that keeps you captivated from the word 'go.' What it will end up doing, ultimately, is leave you scratching your head, wondering how such an intriguing idea on paper was executed so poorly.

Jeff (Patrick Wilson) is a 32 year old photographer who also happens to be a paedophile. He ends up chatting on the internet to the 14 year old Hayley (Ellen Page) who, infatuated with the older man, agrees to meet him for coffee.

Pretty soon they're back at his place, talking, flirting and drinking. It looks pretty bad for Hayley, and we fear that she may be Jeff's next victim.

Then something unexpected happens. Hayley, after warning Jeff about just this sort of thing, mixes him a drink. Pretty soon he starts to feel woozy. Soon after that he passes out cold. And soon after that he wakes up in a chair, his hands and legs tied down, leaving him completely vulnerable and unable to move anywhere. Looks like Jeff just messed with the wrong 14 year old girl.

Sounds intriguing, right? That's what I thought. It sounded like an interesting concept that could have played out in so many interesting and unexpected ways. What exactly does Hayley have in mind for Jeff? How will this affect our perception of Hayley? And, probably most disturbing of all, how strong are our convictions about this situation? Will we end up sympathizing with Jeff, essentially switching sides and empathizing with the enemy? Will Hayley turn out to be as damaged as Jeff?

Those are all very interesting questions, and in the hands of a filmmaker and writers more talented, those could have been answered in interesting and fascinating ways. The truth is, though, that after awhile, you really don't care about all that anymore. In fact, after awhile, you really just want the damned thing to end.

That's because Hard Candy isn't an interesting cat-and-mouse game. It tries to be, but it fails miserably. What we end up getting is Hayley, acting way beyond her age, mentally and emotionally torturing Jeff and Jeff screaming, crying and begging for her to stop. And that's pretty much all we get for the next, oh- two-thirds of the movie, at least.

You sit back and watch this unfold and can't help but have this feeling of, "That's it?" It's not that nothing happens in the plot, but what does happen just doesn't grab you the way you'd expect it to. It goes through the motions, sure, but there's nothing here that really keeps you riveted until the very end [or even the middle, for that matter.]

When the climax finally arrives, you're really too bored to care much what happens to these characters. We don't really find out what makes them tick, which would have been an interesting exploration [especially of Hayley's character] but director David Slade and writer Brian Nelson don't really delve into that. They're too busy teasing us with Hayley's ultimate, horrifying plan for Jeff. Which is too bad, because you get the feeling there are a lot of unexplored avenues that we could have delved into, instead of just skimming the surface of these characters' psyches.

That's not to say that there isn't some exploration into what makes these characters tick, but there's not much.

By the same token, it's not to say that there's no entertainment or suspense to be found in Hard Candy...just not much.