The Devil's Candy

This movie is tense, disturbing, with some heavy imagery, gripping, and has great acting. It's not so much scary as it's disturbing - different things, the way I see it. Watching it was an intense experience. There's some lack of imagination in the underlying plot, in portraying evil and how it acts through people, but I guess that this would be asking too much of an already good movie. It lacks subtlety in key moments. Decisive scenes where the main theme of the movie are discussed are presented hurried way; they aren't properly explored. To be fair, this shouldn't be generalized, though. But I do feel the focus ended up being too much on the unfolding of the actions - a classic goal to goal rather aspect to aspect sort of thing.

The scarcity of good horror genre movies is really saddening, few artists are willing to delve into the nature of fascinating subjects such as evil and fear, but I'd say this movie is one of the good ones and I definitely recommend it.

The Devil's Candy is a movie about a family that consists of a couple and a teenage daughter who move into a new house. Father and daughter are really into metal, father is also a painter and it's like he gets possessed when he's painting and he paints all this nightmarish imagery. There's also this creepy man who kills children that starts stalking the daughter and basically, it gets a bit messy.

The main problem with this movie is that the plot just doesn't come together well. The possession part completely takes a backseat (even though it was shown a lot) and is never really explained, so we have a story about a family being stalked by this very creepy satanist serial killer who kills kids and thinks he sends them for the devil. It's like two plots and one unfolds while the other one is just kinda left hanging in the air. There could have been more, but there wasn't and it doesn't really hold up well.

That's a pretty big flaw, but I liked everything else about the movie. It was well directed and very, very intense. I'm talking biting your nails kind of intense. It also has some sudden very disturbing moments that might be a bit too disturbing to some, but that's a win for the movie. I was surprised by how little gore this movie contained, but still it manages to shock so much in certain moments, so props to the director. The acting was also one of the best I've seen in indie horror movies for a while and it really helped bring us closer to the characters (father and daughter in particular). I wasn't prepared for how good the acting actually was. And also, the movie is pretty stylish and I felt that the director really brought that sense of a nightmare. And if you like metal, that's a good enough reason alone to watch this. The soundtrack and some of the themes are a metal-head's wet dream. And while I'm not a complete metal-head, I'm quite fond of metal and I must say that I really enjoyed those aspects of the movie.

So, this movie might have had a weak script, but it was saved by good directing and strong performances.

It's not disturbing, not gory, not even scary... I can't understand why there are so many reviews claiming that this movie is good horror. It had so much potential and failed to deliver on all fronts. As a satan obsessed metal head, I thought this movie would be right up my ally, but no. It was cliché in all the worst ways, boring, and not creative. There were some opportunities for it to be really gruesome or disturbing that simply weren't taken. Felt like a PG-13 wannabe horror movie trying way too hard to be original. I think the only moment I enjoyed was when the four-horned goat appeared in the yard.

A film about Satan and the devil, how classic. There's an undercurrent of pure dread to this flick. It works its way through the film's veins using music cues, whispering demonic voices and haunting images. Ethan Embry's performance is superbly crafted. A well-meaning dad, that rocks out to metal and paints pictures all day. He feels very real and not like a caricature. (He also gets ripped for this flick, I guess because he paints shirtless for a few scenes. It seems unnecessary, distracting and unfitting for his character but sure).

He begins to hear voices and see things and paint horrible stuff he doesn't understand. It's all very unnerving and convincing and seems to be leading to some inevitable catastrophe.

But the film lets up in the home stretch. It becomes a bit of a supernatural home invasion flick. The film seems undecided about whether there are real demons at play, which unfocuses the movie and makes it seem unsure of itself. The film isn't exactly about investigating the place demons have in the modern world either. It just knows they are inextricably linked with metal. A lot of the build-up seems for naught in the end and it's a real shame.

Byrne has great ideas, a wonderful grasp of character, atmosphere, tension, but maybe not enough to say?

When i first saw the description of this movie, I thought "oh yeah, just another possession movie ... yawn, probably going to be a waste of my evening" ... but then I took a look at how many positive reviews It was getting and decided to give it a go ... and to no disappointment! This movie was well done, lots of original material, well crafted cinematic horror, good acting, good plot, actually reasonably scary and suspenseful... it's a solid horror movie. I recommend it strongly to other horror fans and trust me I don't give that recommendation out easily, there is plenty of 'horror crap' out there, but this is horror gold. Good job.