Hard Candy

Wow, that was awful. If the filmmaking team behind Hard Candy knew what they were doing they could've made a riveting, horrifying and deeply affecting movie that posed some interesting questions about molestation and Internet pedophiles and the like. But instead we're left with a film completely void of feeling or terror or even simple entertainment value.

The movie's main problem must lie in the writing of the two main characters. Patrick Wilson and Ellen Page try their best to deliver worthwhile performances, but unfortunately they have no backing from the screenplay. They are some of the driest, most uninteresting, underdeveloped characters imaginable.


When watching Hard Candy, you are going to see a 30-something man, Jeff, flirt over the internet with a teenage girl, Hayley, and subsequently meet up with her at a coffee shop. More flirting ensues, before they go back to his place for some drinks. The not-so-innocent young woman slips some pills in her would-be molester's Screwdriver and proceeds to torture him because of a sex crime he may or may not have committed. And that's not the story in a nutshell, that's the entire story. Besides a few obstacles Hayley must face in her revenge (?) plot, that's all that happens.

This is just sleaze posing as art. And it's boring sleaze too.

Grade: D