The Devil's Candy

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.

A struggling painter (Ethan Embry) is possessed by supernatural forces after he and his young family move into their dream home in rural Texas (just north of Austin), in this creepy haunted-house tale.

First and foremost, this film deserves credit for working in the metal-horror connection. You don't have to enjoy metal to enjoy this movie, but I think it helps. One reason the 1980s were a great decade for horror is because it was also a great decade for punk and metal. "Devil's Candy" doesn't try to be an 80s throwback, but does offer something of a modern equivalent.

Leading us through the film is Ethan Embry. Like many others, my love for Embry is strong. Not to pigeon-hole him, but he has been in a number of horror films in the last decade (such as the brilliant "Late Phases") and as part of the horror community I'd like to claim him as one of ours. Fans of "Grace and Frankie" may fight me, but we would all agree he is a great actor and truly underrate. Casey Affleck an Oscar contender? Really? Embry emotes with his eyes in way that few others can -- we have seen him sensitive, petrified, terrifying, and everything else. Some of that we see in this film (though luckily for us he is more on the good side this time around).

And countering Embry is Pruitt Taylor Vince, who unfortunately is probably best known as a "character actor" who has one of those faces you have seen 100 times but don't know the name. If this is you, make this the movie you start remembering Vince for. Holy smokes. He has had a handful of "idiot" or "incompetent" roles, but he really turns it on here, making us wonder just how much he is tormented inside and having pity on him, even though we know within the first five minutes that he is a tool of the devil.

The plot is thin, but not necessarily in a bad way. Rather than get bogged down or become too cerebral, "Devil's Candy" prefers to keep the pace moving so we can get punched in the face over and over again in its relatively short running time. You like cerebral horror? Great, we can watch "Frailty". This is not that film. But it is one filled with rich atmospheric cinematography and a dark, yet vibrant color palette (if such a combination is possible). With all due respect to writer-director Sean Byrne, it is cinematographer Simon Chapman who sold me on this film.

The only thing that left me wondering, is why did the film take so long for a proper release? Beginning in 2015, it was floating around film festivals, receiving praise. The journey continued throughout 2016, and we finally see a release from IFC in March 2017. I suspect maybe it was securing the music budget, as getting the rights to put Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" on DVD is probably not cheap. But what do I know? Regardless, IFC must be thanked for getting this out to the masses. Perhaps not the best horror film coming out on home video this year, but I assure you it is far from the worst. Any horror fan who has 90 minutes to spare would be investing their time wisely with "The Devil's Candy".

The biggest problem modern horror films seem to have is making the audience care about their characters. Generally, they are so cliché, bland, dumb and unrealistic that within the first 10 minutes of the film no one cares any longer about their fate. So when I saw early on in 'The Devil's Candy' that the main characters were a family of hippy bogans, I'll admit I was worried for the sake of the film. I make no mistake about the fact that these are not people I can relate to in any way, and have had almost universally negative experiences with them in my life. On the contrary though, that turned out to be the strongest element to the film. I loved this family. They were charming, caring, relatable and down to Earth. I genuinely cared about their fate, and that is a large part of what made 'The Devil's Candy' a very fine horror film.

The second thing I loved about this film is that is never cheats. No scare is a false one. Nothing is suddenly revealed to be a dream sequence. No super-natural elements were required simply to make the story work. That is incredibly rare in the history of horror movies, let alone modern ones. Writer/director Sean Byrne needs to be absolutely commended on this. It is a brilliant effort on his part.

There really isn't a lot of negatives I can come up with for this film. The only thing holding it back from being a '10' was an unforgettable ending. Other than that it is basically flawless. Fantastic acting, a simple yet brilliant and effective story, genuine scares that never cheat and characters that are both likable and relatable. In an industry that is seemingly completely lost as to how to make a good horror film, 'The Devil's Candy' needs to be studied by everyone in Hollywood. It is a very good film.

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.

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.