Hard Candy (2005)

Well now, the profusion of low scores for this title I'm seeing on IMDB are interesting. Some of the reviews themselves are rather revealing, too. I don't blame most of my fellows; I couldn't really give this a higher score even though a part of me wanted to, but on the whole I'm very glad I watched this film and as a work of art that puts the viewer in the position of being the "victim" of a kind of sociological experiment, I think it's an admirable success.A mistake I think many people make when viewing film is to try to ascribe a message to it: a moral you can sum up in a sentence, a payload or political polemic. It's not that people necessarily want to see this in the films they watch, but they can't help but do this sometimes, and oftentime the result of their conclusions leaves viewers feeling angry and manipulated.Make no mistake, then, this film is manipulative. I ask, though, why shouldn't it be? Furthermore, although it's manipulative in a rather extreme, even heavy-handed way, I don't think it's trying to deliver a message to the viewer in a neat little box with a bow. What I believe it is doing is presenting a situation which, after all, is not all that uncommon in the annals of recent human history, and turning it on its head; asking us to examine it from several different angles and perspectives which we might not have considered. So, the one criticism I really have of this film is unfortunately the same one that everybody else who actually liked it (that is, those that aren't utterly convinced that it's trying to shove a feminist message down their throats) have: I don't see how haley was able to do some of the things she apparently did in this movie. The precociousness and intelligence, I can buy, but the physical strength is a bit more of a stretch. Interestingly, every time jeff gets poleaxed and comes to, haley has done something else rather incredible with his body. How does she manage it? jeff must be twice her weight and size. Even if she bench presses that kind of weight regularly, managing to manoeuvre him into a chair, get off his clothes, suffocate him unconscious with cling wrap (in reality I suspect he would have been fighting really hard and it would have taken several minutes to accomplish this, though I suppose he could have been already weakened by being drugged earlier), suspend him from the ceiling -- all that stuff stretches credibility to its breaking point. In spite of having no difficulty accepting her intelligence, too, I did find at a couple of points that I was listening to an older woman speak, and not a fourteen-year-old-girl. This is particularly evident when she is reprimanding jeff for allowing her to drink and accepting her flirtations. I"ts so easy to blame a kid!", she says. "If a kid says, 'hey, let's make screwdrivers!', you take the alcohol away!" I couldn't help but feel this was the screen-writer pointing the finger and not a "kid" talking at all, though Ellen page delivered the whole scene with a lot of feeling and intensity.As for her incredible physical feats, hey, maybe she had an accomplice we didn't even see? We always get those scenes from Jeff's perspective, right, so, you never know! I'm only being half-serious, but the last-moment revelation at the end that jeff in fact had an accomplice and they were responsible for the missing/dead girl together could make for a nice comparison.The lack of other characters in the movie didn't really bother me, though, despite that last-moment reveal of a person of great significance whom we never even heard of up til that point. This after all isn't the point of the film, and in the end I admire it's sheer dedication to minimalism. This could have been a stage play, easily. And some of my favourite productions are two-handers in minimal sets, so this one fits right in. At 100 minutes though, it is perhaps just a little too lenghty, or maybe I would have spent some of that extra time in greater build-up before the two characters met, or background, or maybe even a phone call or two between jeff and Aaron to establish that they had some kind of relationship so it didn't come so much out of left-field. Still, I think it entirely possible that things like that would have taken away from the direct, what-you-see-is-what-you-get nature of the film, and that is in the end one of its most admirable qualities.The other thing to really admire in the film are the performances, which are both top-class in their own right. haley is adorable and, during those moments when we still feel jeff might be innocent, it's easy to see how he could be taken in fully and fighting with himself to stay away from this dangerously precocious and sexually awakened youngster. Jeff himself is put through the wringer of emotions and displays a wide range, but mostly he just comes across as a rather normal, low-key guy in his early thirties, the type whom you wouldn't think twice about meeting on the street. That's part of the genius of it. He has an explanation for everything; he has no harmful urges, he's just a photographer!In the end, I don't think this movie comes down firmly on haley's side any more than it really does on Jeff's. I could wish that we knew a little more about her, because I don't think the role of badass vigilante entirely suits, but I'm ok with a bit of obscurity and appreciate that the filmmakers didn't want to get bogged down in backstory and unnecessary complexities. This is a "what if?" movie, and thus I think it's advisable to suspend disblief at some of its more incredible elements and allow the thought experiment to proceed. The thought experiment in question asks you to imagine "what if this often all-too-real and tragic situation happened this way instead?" "What if the child got the upper hand? What if the child in question had her own particular kind of psychopathy to contend with?" It's interesting, and timely, and although I have some reservations, I'm glad it was made.

Hard Candy is a challenging film to experience viewing. It's discomforting, questionable, and shares a weird parallel with reality as it discusses a heavy controversial topic. It immediately immerses audiences into its unsettling universe where everyone are either perpetrators or oblivious to the main narrative. Despite focusing primarily on two characters, what mysterious events unfold among them are deeply alienating and horrific.However, even with its powerful narrative and performances, it's a complicated and vague film that expects audiences to develop their interpretations of certain outcomes than presenting them. Other issues include its sometimes disjointed cinematography, disposable minor characters, characters having an identity crisis, some misleading and miswritten scenes, and obvious missed opportunities to make a statement in exchange of simpler storytelling.It's a seemingly hard film to watch that's actually harder to chew.

First of all it's just not a big-one-script at all so if you attend to forget about the technical directing thing and stick to the plot so you can enjoy it, You get disappointed. The worst is the "form" of it which included directing, filming, sound, etc. All these unprofessional camera angles and close shots and add those coloring and filters which helping of course to transfer the atmosphere but yet completely unnecessary or, could have done it in a better way, and weak sound effects and soundtrack that sometimes in the movie you feel the lack of it, All gathered to give you a bad experience you could have on a movie. Don't wanna talk about the plot, it already has been explained in the plot twist! and that's all. If it doesn't motivate you enough to watch it and look for a better directing in this, well you get nothing.

A revenge thriller where, yes, a young teenager castrates a 30-something man. It's the climax of the film. It's all you need to know, and the only reason why you need to see this film. It's brutal, and awesome.Hard Candy is an excellent title for it, but I'd rather go with something more along the lines of.. oh, lets see... Ball-less in Seattle, Eunuch Got Mail, Nixed Nuts. That's right, I just made three castration-themed parodies of Nora Ephron titles. Somebody give me a Pulitzer.