Hard Candy

So I was planning on putting together a Comic-Con post, followed by another Film Club post (I’ve got 13 movies to do write-ups on). But I saw a pre-screening of a movie last night that I simply had to post about….

“Hard Candy”

Any of you who saw “V For Vendetta” at the Cinerama may have seen the poster for this in the lobby. It’s the first film from “Vulcan Productions”, which is Paul Allen’s new film production unit. Apparently he didn’t have enough going on in his day….

I hadn’t really head much about the film, other than that it played at Sundance, and was quickly picked up by Lionsgate, who apparently were the only production company willing to pick the film up without making any changes to it.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago at Comic-Con, I got to have a really cool conversation with a guy by the name of Steve Niles. None of you have probably heard of him, but I’m sure you will. He wrote a Comic book called “30 Days of Night” which was a little independent venture that become a pretty big phenomenon. Sam Raimi (Of Evil Dead and Spider-Man fame) very quickly bought the rights to the comic to adapt it into a film. When it became clear that he wasn’t going to have time to do it anytime soon (He was finishing up Spider-man 2 at the time, and had just been green lit to start work on part 3), he decided to just produce it and have another director do it.

Anyway, I asked Mr. Niles about what was happening with the movie (apparently not many people knew it was coming out, because I was the first person in his long ass line to ask about it), and he started talking about how it’s going to be filmed in New Zealand and that WETA was handling the effects, and this guy named David Slade was going to direct it. I mentioned that I didn’t know who that was, and he started telling me about this movie, Hard Candy, that he saw a cut of that I absolutely had to see. He went on for a good 2 or 3 minutes about how this movie was going to simply blow me away.

So I get my invite to a pre-screening with the Writer, Director & Star (Ellen Page) of the film. It turns out the star, Ellen Page is going to play Shadowcat in X-Men 3. So I went into this thing more excited about getting my copy of “30 Days of Night” signed & asking Kitty Pryde what Wolverine’s like in real life, than actually seeing the movie itself. So the light’s go down and the movie starts….

…..Two hours later, all I wanted to do was go home to my mommy.

Without giving too much away, here’s the plot of the movie….

A 32 year old guy meets a 14 year old girl on the internet. They decide to meet in a coffee shop and talk. Afterward she asks him to take her to his house. When they get there, she drugs him, and very quickly the predator becomes the prey.

So, that’s basically the first 15 minutes of the movie. From that point on things get really f**ked.

There’s one scene in particular in this movie that was so hard to watch, that men were literally storming out of the theater until the scene was over (and to be honest I nearly joined them). And what’s great about the scene in particular is that it’s done like the ear scene in Reservoir Dogs. You know what’s happening, but you don’t specifically see it. You’re just left with the sound effects, the characters reactions, and your own imagination.

The acting in this movie is amazing, simply amazing. It’s shot very tight on the characters so you really just take in their performances without any distractions. Ellen Page in particular is really worth mentioning, simply because she’s so young and her character has a ferocity that could put Hannibal Lector to shame.
Really, it’s the pacing and story structure that really bring the story home. Once this movie kicks into high gear, it never once lets up. It’s like a monster truck show….”The ticket pays for the whole seat, but you’ll only need