Bad Candy

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.

In the tradition of 'The Twilight Zone', 'Creepshow' and 'Scary stories to tell in the Dark', 'Bad Candy' is an anthology of short stories - told by radio presenters on Halloween night.

This is a seriously demented and bloody film - with a great soundtrack, I might add. The first story is about a young girl, whose stepfather won't allow her to go trick or treating. Able to make her sketches come alive, she gets her revenge on him.

Then there's the selfish young boy who doesn't care about Halloween, but wants candy - good quality candy, and snuffs at the candy offered he finds. There's a guy who offers drugs to strangers at parties, and gets more than he bargained for. And the woman who fantasizes about having sex with a dead guy in a morgue. There's also a bunch of people with pumpkins on their heads being hunted by a vampire. Finally, the House on the Hill.

The film does feature good photography, and great visuals here and there, but in general I just didn't find it interesting enough. There were some creepy moments, and some shocking moments. As the title indicates, 'Bad Candy' might leave a sour taste in your mouth. There are better anthology horrors - or Halloween-related movies out there.

Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad movie, and might please your palate for some gory Halloween horror. It's worth watching at least once if you're into the genre.

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.

If you can watch this for free and there's nothing else on, it might be passable. It's poorly lit, poor sound, lots of bad acting and chaotic story line. If nothing else is available and you don't have to pay, go for it.

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.