Hard Candy on DVD (2006)

Totally gripping

Melon from East Sussex , 17/06/2006

This is a tense, edge-of-the-seat two-hander that hits you hard and keeps you guessing right up to the very end. It constantly toys with your emotions, swinging sympathy back and forth between the two characters as their roles shift continuously from predator to prey and back again. Page and Wilson are both breathtakingly good in their parts. Most of the film is played out in long, tight close-ups of their sweating faces, picking out every nuance and look of fear. A tough-as-nails, scary-as-hell movie that really isn't for the faint-hearted, although it does (thankfully) follow the often forgotten rule that what's implied is a hell of a lot more powerful than what's shown.

Read all reviews

Pathetic attempt to win contoversy points

J Rawlinson from Birmingham UK [Highly rated reviewer] , 30/07/2007

This film epitomizes controversy over content and watching it is to waste 120 precious minutes better spent doing... [Insert anything here]. The heroine is so vacuous, nauseating and badly characterized that in the films closing minuites as the director is desperately trying to weave in the plot. I was left pondering how to moralize a victory for our despicable but marginally more intriguing villain. In short: to call this film garbage is an insult to garbage.

Read all reviews

You wont have seen anything like this before

A customer from N Wales , 12/07/2007

Refreshingly different, Gripping, Controversial, disturbing, unpredictable and what a fantastic little actor Ellen Page is, she deserves a gong of some sort for this. I was absorbed by it, it was original and i didn't know where the plot was going so it kept me entertained right til the end. Ellen Page was awesome and the other guy was good too (a lookalike cross between Midge Ure and Kevin Costner!). I recommend u to watch this, one of the best i've hired yet from easy DVD

Read all reviews

Hard Candy

SAI81 from Tonbridge [Highly rated reviewer] , 29/11/2006

I don't want to say much about the happenings of this film, for fear of spoiling it. Suffice to say that it's a two handed power play between 14 year old Hayley (Ellen Page) and 32 year old Jeff (Patrick Wilson) the two meet on the internet before getting together at a coffee shop and then back at Jeff's house where things take a turn for the unexpected.

The screenplay, by first time feature writer Brian Nelson, is outstanding. Packed with memeorable lines, the blackest of comedy and shocking revelations about both his main characters it keeps you nailed to the edge of your seat.

Another massive help in that is the performances. For over an hour the only people we see for any length of time are Hayley and Jeff so Page and Wilson must carry the film. Page is simply extraordinary, every line delivered at perfect pitch but never once winking at the audience on the comedy, it's an incredibly intense performance and one that belies her tender age (perhaps 17 at shooting). Were there any justice her mantelpiece wold now be groaning under the weight of the awards she's won for the part, but Hard Candy isn't the kind of movie that wins awards.

Patrick Wilson is also great. He's not able, after the first 20 minutes or so, to use much besides his face and voice to give a peformance but still peels back the layers of his character in horribly compelling fashion.

Perhaps the cleverest aspect of Nelson's screenplay is the way in which it plays with our loyalties. Some will come out of the film on Hayley's side, some on Jeff's, some simply appalled.

Director David Slade (another debutante with a big future) shoots almost the entire film in tight close up. This gives the whole thing, right from the start, an uncomfortable intimacy. He shows us little, implies almost everything before throwing our assumptions back at us in often shocking fashion.

This is one of the best horror films to grace the cinema in a long time and can stand proudly alongside the genre's true classics. It will be an uncomfortable experience (several people left during the operation sequence in my screening) but it won't be one you'll soon forget and that's all too rare these days.

Read all reviews

Hard Candy (Yike)

Theweekendwatcher from Chester , 13/07/2008

An overall film based around women/girls getting their own back on men (well the more shady men on the planet's surface). Good flow to this film and quite intense at times. Good story line and well thought out. NO specail effects here though, this is just a good thriller (not family enetertainment though), it has an 18 rating due the film's adult content.

Read all highest rated reviews

Hard Candy

Harriet Barbir from London [Highly rated reviewer] , 11/03/2007

Following the disappearance of a local girl, Haley 14, meets a man she befriends in an Internet chatroom. Neither are the likeable characters they first appear and tension mounts after she goes back to his home, with dire consequences. This is a riveting watch, shocking in parts, with superb acting and great dialogue, which reveals the inner workings of a mind truly mad.

Read all highest rated reviews