Hard Candy
Hard Candy is a sweet dose of revenge wrapped up in a hard shell of suspense. You may think you are hot on the tail of what is coming up when you start into this sorted story, but nothing is quite what you might suspect.
As the story begins, we become the unsuspecting voyeurs of an online communication exchange between an obviously older male and a female teen who goes by the screen name of Thong Girl. They are planning a meeting at a coffee house--- where else would a teenager meet for a date, after all?--- and we are quickly forced to prepare our weak hearts for their sickeningly secret rendezvous.
In the next scene we find Thong Girl as she awaits her date at the brew pub for teens mowing down on a mouth-watering piece of chocolate cake in such a way as to remind the audience that this girl is such a newbie to the years of teendom that she has yet to become tainted by the thought that a delectable dessert is anything more than the utmost in enjoyment. As she innocently savors each morsel of her cake, we are suddenly drawn back to reality when her inappropriate Prince Charming appears and swipes a bit of frosting off of her lip with one of his digits. Your body will shiver in disgust at the thought of this slimy maneuver. And so the story begins…
Jeff (Patrick Wilson) slickly maneuvers Hayley, powerfully played by Ellen Page, back to his pad in his oh-so-cool Mini Cooper. (Only an innocent could be impressed by a full grown man zooming through town in a miniaturized automobile!) Once at his abode, it doesn’t take long to see that, perhaps, it is Hayley who is, in fact, the slick one.
For reasons not fully explained but still fairly obvious, Hayley has actually plotted the whole encounter and plans a turn of the tables on the prospective pedophile. Hayley takes on the role of the aggressor and we soon find that she intends to torment her newfound prey in the most vile and sickening of ways.
This film joins the talents of music video director, David Slade, and Brian Nelson, TV scribe. The storyline is loosely based, according to legend, on events that actually happened in Japan. As the story waxes on and you get a taste of the vengeful, precocious Hayley you pray that situations like these are not what our teens could ever possibly be mixed up in even as you know that this is, in fact, what our world has come to. Is it more disturbing to think that the pedophilic character, Jeff, runs rampant over the waves of the Internet or that teenagers are capable of becoming frightening vixens like Hayley?
The concepts in this movie will prompt a strong gag reflex in most of its viewers. The thought of grown men pursuing their ‘hard candy’ online, Internet lingo for an under-aged girl, is revolting enough, but then to be forced to ponder the painfully punitive lashing back at the supposed-to-be innocent hands of the prey… Imagining our sweet and innocent youth being so hardened by this day and age that they are capable of such diabolical revenge is almost as sickening as pedophilia itself. Well maybe not, but Hard Candy will really get you contemplating it.
Grades
Overall: B+
Story: A-
Acting: A-
Visuals: B
Originality/Innovation: A
Enjoyability: B+
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