Bad Candy

Bad Candy (2020) is a movie that I recently watched on Tubi but it's also available on Prime. The storyline follows a local radio show who tells stories about the twisted past of New Salem on Halloween Night.

This movie is codirected by Scott B. Hansen (The Possession Experiment) and Desiree Connell and stars Zach Galligan (Gremlins), Derek Russo (The Mule), Corey Taylor (Rucker), Michael Aaron Milligan (Samaritan) and Haley Leary (Nashville).

This is a movie made up of some short stories that are better than others. The acting and writing is average for the most part but there are some worthwhile scenes. The makeup and outfits are cool and there's a clown in the woods that's awesome. There's also a good use of a nail gun and there's a nurse in this that's smoking and her story was my favorite segment.

Overall, this has some elements that make it a must watch for horror enthusiasts. I would consider this an average addition to the horror genre worth watching once and a 5.5/10.

First, the bad...

Loud audio, bad CGI, predictable, disjointed, over use of drone shots, astoundingly one dimensional characters, smarmy narrators. Plus it infused some brief and very unneeded politics.

Not scary, not funny, not original and not so-bad-that-it's-good. Each vignette just ends. They are just incidents and not stories.

Almost every over-used horror cliche is on display; killer clowns, flying demons, duplicitous ghost hunters, unhinged army veterans, people who put razor blades in candy etc.

On the good side... shot very well, professionally edited, some very subtle homages to other horror films,

The army guys vignette at least had some humor. And I enjoyed their part

Army Guy 1: "You know you get really sleepy after you eat White people."

Army guy 1: "Why didn't you hit her?" Army guy 2 "She was a woman".

Army guy 1 : "What are you, sexist?"

The ending kind of ties things together and I REALLY wanted to like this movie, but it is a mess, a loud, silly mess.

I was honestly really looking forward to this. Mostly because I was really wanting to get myself into the spooky season mood and this was the first thing to drop. However...man. This is bad. Real bad

Sure, it's low budget. The props looks straight off the discount shelf of Spirit Halloween, and the camera work and lighting is just above home movie level professionalism. Honestly, I'm fine with that. The acting is extremely amateur across the board, and while not ideal, at least that has a certain awkward charm to it. The real problem...is the writing

Everything about it feels lazy, generic, soulless, and cringeworthy. This contains every trope you've seen 1000 times before. Every scare is telegraphed. The dialogue is weird and robotic, and so much of this is almost carbon copy rip offs of much better horror films. So uninspired and lazy. Big fail.

SPOOKTOBER chapter 20: A Horror set on Halloween

Have a lot of mixed emotions after "Bad Candy", enjoyed it more than expected, but it's also a considerably bad movie all around. "Trick'R'Treat" has been, and still is, by a mile, the best, definitive Halloween horror comfort film to me, and "Bad Candy", as badly as it might wish, doesn't ascend half as high. Nonetheless, in this intensively colorful and feverishly edited anthology where every story somehow mysteriously feels the same, some seasonal fun is to be had.

I went for some candy because it's a Halloween themed horror anthology, narrated by Corey Taylor, leader of one great band called Slipknot. Well, vaguely narrated... He's "Chilly Billy" on his radio show of the same name, and together with his co-host Paul they tell horror stories live on Halloween night, on Psychotronic FM.... Sounds pretty cool, but, as the stories kick off, we quickly get the gist of what we're in for, and it doesn't really get better, or any different moving forward.

I love for the amount of effort that has gone in "Bad Candy" - the lighting department went demented at some point, the production team probably bought out every Halloween store within a 50 mile radius, the editor and DP's must've been on 10 red bulls a day, because it's a fast paced frenzy where space and time is mixed up sometimes, and at least half of the actors are having good fun in their pastiche roles. While there's always something going on, the budgetary constraints and silly writing, and choppy overall direction remain active flaws throughout, there's some quite bad cgi sprinkled throughout, the acting is wonky frequently within the many characters, dialogue can be pretty kooky, and every story, while different in plot, somehow manages to feel too similar to each other. If there would've been more variety, if "Bad Candy" would be an anthology in a more distinctive way, I would've given it that 5 I was considering.

It's like a C grade horror flick, it's cheap and feels amateur, or like a YouTube video more often than not, but the heart is in the right place, and "Bad Candy" should find its way to those who are true suckers for Halloween vibes. Regardless of quality, it can be felt that makers of "Bad Candy" love the topic. The list of downsides is hefty, so it might be hard to love it, but not very hard to have fun with it. My rating: 4/10.

Can't pick a better name for the movie. It's like trick or treating and getting home emptying your bag out. A few segments are like getting full candy bars, while a couple others are like getting candy corn. It's worth a one time watch. I'll give it a 5/10 and 1 extra for the creepy clown.