The only prior knowledge I had of this film�s content was the poster, a red riding hood-clad young girl standing on a bear trap, facing away. That was all I had to guide me as I watched the debut of director David Slade and writer Brian Nelson, who are surely set for big things in Hollywood, and to warn me of the dangerous ground I was now setting out upon. Hard Candy is a very clever, very twisty and at one point frighteningly disturbed film which had me wide-eyed and attentive from the first second. The acting throughout is superb, with Patrick Wilson and Ellen Page (the only two characters of any note) giving a tour de force battle of wits.
The film�s central theme is controversial, the meeting of 14 year old Hayley (Page) and 32 year old Jeff (Wilson) after three weeks of chatting on the net. At first the conversation seems normal, with the charming Jeff talking around the subject of sexual relations and Hayley being a coquettishly na�ve, yet flirtatious, young waif. He wipes chocolate from her mouth and buys her a t-shirt. She flashes him her bra and talks him into taking her to his house. It is never clear from the outset who is seducing who, and this peculiar relationship continues until they reach his home and the movie takes a far more sinister turn.
I don�t want to give much more away at this point, but suffice it to say poor little Hayley is anything but, and her motives and feelings turn deadly in a very short time. From then on the film is a thriller of epic proportions as Hayley shows her true colours, berating the confused and frightened Jeff and revealing that she knows far more about him and his history than he ever could have expected. While slow-boiling the film never lets up on the tension, and it is never clear until the final moments what it is that Jeff has, or has not, done. Is he an innocent victim and she a deranged lunatic? Or are her actions justified by his crimes?
Naturally, as with all thrillers, Hard Candy has several moments where the tables are turned, but the captor/captive dynamic is always maintained. Eventually Hayley�s intentions change from mere rebuke to being far more terrifying. It is at this point that I must hold my hands up and say that I have never witnessed a more grueling, painful and genuinely scary sequence. To anyone who has seen the ending of Audition, that has NOTHING on this! It is rare for an American film to out-squeam a foreign production but Hard Candy achieves it handily.
The film also receives high marks from me for its handling of the net-angle. I for one consider the media�s relentless attacks on the internet (and, for example, Microsoft�s shutting down of its UK chatrooms) as a grotesque over-reaction to what is a minor, though worrying, issue. Hard Candy however shows the two main characters as unrepresentative of the central body of net users, and as people first and foremost. The same events have been shown, net free, in films like Fatal Attraction and Audition, and it is their actions, not the precipitating method of communication, which make it all so disturbing. |
