Swifty: After chatting online for three weeks, Hayley (Ellen Page), a (supposedly) 14 year old chick, meets up with Jeff (Patrick Wilson), a charming and articulate photographer in his thirties. Suspecting he's a pedophile, she follows him home, attempting to expose him (heh heh heh, expose, heh heh heh). Much psychological torture occurs. A game of cat and mouse begins, with the mouse constantly winning, and winning, and winning... reminding you of those Road Runner cartoons.
In a review of 'Hard Candy', Todd of Twitchfilm.net said 'the key problem lies in the way the characters are presented. This is a story about pedophilia which portrays the pedophile in a much more sympathetic light than his captor for the vast majority of the film. Hayley is so far over the top, so seriously and obviously ill that just about anyone would appear in a positive light next to her, and Jeff does just that throughout.' Heh, Guestblogger Justin was definitely one of the people who wanted to see Hayley dead too. And in an interview with Cinematical, screenwriter Brian Nelson said "I was at one screening where the chant "Kill the bitch!" came up and I was horrified."
Well, yeah, Hayley's pretty sadistic, and while what Jeff did may have been inacceptable, or wrong, Hayley's just as messed up and insane. So ultimately, there's really no one for me to root for in the film, it's just that being the sadistic, dark-natured being I am, I kinda enjoyed the methods she used to mess with Jeff's mind. But because the methods weren't REALLY that sadistic in retrospect, I ended up feeling a tad disappointed, I mean, I was expecting something like those Saw movies, where you see her forcing him to open his own stomach, reach for a key buried within his guts to escape, or maybe gouge out his own eyeballs just because the key's grafted into his eye socket or something. But nope, nothing like that. I felt just like one of those audiences who went to see Jodie Foster's Contact for aliens, only to realize that the only alien she saw was her dead dad. Gah. Now, don't be repulsed by me, even Howsy had stated in his review that he hoped the punishment she gave him would've been more hardcore.
But man, dissing Goldfrapp is not cool. For that, I can't bring myself to like Hayley. Film's pretty intense, and compelling, but it's nothing special. My appetite remained after watching the film. Might be a good lesson for sexual predators in Myspace, I guess.
Justin: I kept expecting Sandra Oh, the neighbor, to bust in at some random point and kill Haley. This would have been awesome. The correct way to end this film would be for Sandra Oh's neighbor character to have been a partner with Jeff from the beginning. No one would be expecting a female paedophile, much less a lesbian one. A SADISTIC lesbian one. Why wasn't I commissioned to write this?
Miu Miu.
Swifty: Fuck yes! Anyway, the much about the film's background can be read in Michael Guillen's entry at The Evening Class (which, I'm sure is called The Evening Class because every single entry feels educational). Miu Miu.
Watch the remixed Hard Candy trailer:
In a review of 'Hard Candy', Todd of Twitchfilm.net said 'the key problem lies in the way the characters are presented. This is a story about pedophilia which portrays the pedophile in a much more sympathetic light than his captor for the vast majority of the film. Hayley is so far over the top, so seriously and obviously ill that just about anyone would appear in a positive light next to her, and Jeff does just that throughout.' Heh, Guestblogger Justin was definitely one of the people who wanted to see Hayley dead too. And in an interview with Cinematical, screenwriter Brian Nelson said "I was at one screening where the chant "Kill the bitch!" came up and I was horrified."
Well, yeah, Hayley's pretty sadistic, and while what Jeff did may have been inacceptable, or wrong, Hayley's just as messed up and insane. So ultimately, there's really no one for me to root for in the film, it's just that being the sadistic, dark-natured being I am, I kinda enjoyed the methods she used to mess with Jeff's mind. But because the methods weren't REALLY that sadistic in retrospect, I ended up feeling a tad disappointed, I mean, I was expecting something like those Saw movies, where you see her forcing him to open his own stomach, reach for a key buried within his guts to escape, or maybe gouge out his own eyeballs just because the key's grafted into his eye socket or something. But nope, nothing like that. I felt just like one of those audiences who went to see Jodie Foster's Contact for aliens, only to realize that the only alien she saw was her dead dad. Gah. Now, don't be repulsed by me, even Howsy had stated in his review that he hoped the punishment she gave him would've been more hardcore.
But man, dissing Goldfrapp is not cool. For that, I can't bring myself to like Hayley. Film's pretty intense, and compelling, but it's nothing special. My appetite remained after watching the film. Might be a good lesson for sexual predators in Myspace, I guess.
Justin: I kept expecting Sandra Oh, the neighbor, to bust in at some random point and kill Haley. This would have been awesome. The correct way to end this film would be for Sandra Oh's neighbor character to have been a partner with Jeff from the beginning. No one would be expecting a female paedophile, much less a lesbian one. A SADISTIC lesbian one. Why wasn't I commissioned to write this?
Miu Miu.
Swifty: Fuck yes! Anyway, the much about the film's background can be read in Michael Guillen's entry at The Evening Class (which, I'm sure is called The Evening Class because every single entry feels educational). Miu Miu.
Watch the remixed Hard Candy trailer:
Tags:
