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Special Features
- Commentary by director David Slade and writer Brian Nelson
- Commentary by actors Patrick Wilson and Ellen Page
- Deleted and extended scenes
- "Creating Hard Candy" featurette
- "Controversial Confection" mini-featurette
- DVD-ROM: Production notebook
- Trailer
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The supercharged possibilities of a single set and two amped-up actors are explored in Hard Candy, a twisted cocktail with a poison kicker. After a flirtatious encounter in an online chat room, two people agree to meet for coffee: a 32-year-old man (Patrick Wilson) and a 14-year-old girl (Ellen Page). They quickly advance to his house, and just as quickly, the apparent pedophilic seduction morphs into something else entirely. After the tables turn, Hard Candy becomes a tale of revenge and torture that might have tempted a filmmaker like Park Chanwook. Here, first-time feature director David Slade opts for a slick look that stays close to the actors, and you can't really blame him--this movie is like a conceptual, more-than-slightly unbelievable off-Broadway play, a showcase for actors and "controversial" ideas. Those actors are strong: Patrick Wilson (Angels in America, Phantom of the Opera) is every bit as creepy as he needs to be, and Ellen Page has nothing short of a triumph. The Canadian actress was around 18 when she shot the film, but looks like an adolescent, which makes her authoritative wrath all the more shocking to witness. The provocations of Hard Candy sometimes seem arbitrary or forced, but Page's electrifying performance can't be denied, or dismissed. --Robert Horton
Product Description
A smart, charming teenage girl, Hayley probably shouldn't be going to a local coffee shop to meet Jeff, a 30-something fashion photographer she met on the Internet. But before she knows it, she's mixing drinks at Jeff's place and stripping for an impromptu photo shoot. It's Jeff's lucky night. But Hayley isn't as innocent as she looks, and the night takes a turn when she begins to impose a hard-hitting investigation on Jeff in an attempt to reveal his possibly scandalous past.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
130 of 163 people found the following review helpful
The film directed by David Slade and written by Brian Nelson seems disturbing enough for just the subject matter alone, but it's also eerie in how timely it's release has been. With reports of teenage girls becoming victims of internet sexual predators appearing in all types of news media, Hard Candy arrives in the theaters through a limited release to highlight this current trend. Slade and Nelson has created an disturbing and, at times, a very uncomfortable film that shows the many twists and turns that happens when the roles of prey and predator become interchangeable.
There's no denying that Hard Candy aims to put a new twist on the exploitation subgenre of the rape-revenge films that dominated the late 70's and early 80's. Brian Nelson's clearly channeling the influences from such rape-revenge fantasy films like Mastrosimone's Extremities and the very disturbing and exploitive I Spit On Your Grave (Day of the Woman) by Meir Zarchi. From the beginning the audience is shown the set-up of an adult instant messenging another person with the screen name of Thonggrrl14. Thonggrrl14 is in fact a 14 year-old teenage girl named Hayley and the adult on the other end a 32 year-old photographer named Jeff who goes by the screen name Lensman319. Jeff has an unhealthy and disturbing penchant for pubescent girls as the subject of his camera lens.
From their first meeting meeting at a coffee house where Jeff gradually begins a flirtatious conversation with the young Hayley to the point in the first act when he finally convinces her to go back to his house whcih doubles as his studio. There's really no denying the sense of unease that permeates the first act as Hard Candy gradually paints Jeff as the sexual predator that he is. There's no denying the fact that a man of his age should not be flirting and behaving as if the girl across from him is a fully-grown and developed woman of similar age. Hayley also comes across during this first act like a teenage girl dazzled by an older man who treats her older than her real age. It's really a disturbing look at just how easily an adult can seduce a child into doing things they normally shouldn't be doing.
Hayley (played by young Canadian actor Ellen Page) soons shows just how wrong and mistaken Jeff has been in picking her as his new prey. I don't use that word loosely for that is what this film truly is when boiled down to its basic component. A one-on-one three-act play (Brian Nelson's experience as a playwright shows in the stage-like sequences from beginning to end) between a predator and prey. This time around the prey has turned out to be the one who has done the hunting and the consequences on the wanna-be predator that is Jeff leads to a slow and deliberate set-up that looks like something out of Takashi Miike's Audition. Hayley's turning the tables on her stalker shows that girls her age are intelligent enough to know that what Jeff is doing is wrong. Hayley's answer to that is to be the hunter instead and fix Jeff's "problem" through what she calls as "preventive maintenance." What she calls "preventive maintenance" is bound to cause many men in the audience to sit very uncomfortably and wince on more than once occassion.
The acting job done by Ellen Page (balancing her indie work here with a turn as Kitty Pride in the upcoming X3: The Last Stand) is dazzling and really shows her as an up and coming talent that needs to be watched. She was technically 15 year-old when the film was made and already she showed a keen grasp of the script which deals with disturbing topics. There's a scene in Jeff's car as they reach his home where a passing glance of the camera at her face shows not a gullible teenager, but a determined and somewhat oft-kiltered individual who knows what she will be doing in the coming hours will be medieval harsh but in her mind justified. Patrick Wilson (last seen as Raoul in The Phantom of the Opera)as Jeff plays the would-be sexual predator admirably. His range of emotions go from outright denials of Hayley's accusations to impotent rage and desperation as his fate is described to him in Miike-like detail by his teenage captor.
If there's a flaw to mar the intense and suffocating atmosphere this stage-like film creates it would be in the script itself. At times the Hayley character becomes a one-note individual whose beyond her years demeenor seemed to cold and rehearsed. I really can't put the blame for this on Ms. Page, but on the writer himself. It seems like Brian Nelson is trying too hard to add twist and turns on the story being told. He seems to enjoy overmuch his ability to tug back and forth on his audiences' emotional investment in the film and the two characters. He actually pulls off the trick of making the sexual predator earn the audiences' sympathy at what is about to be done to him. But instead of continuing on with that tangent and thus putting Hayley on a darker and more sinister light, Nelson backs off and pulls the audience back to wanting physical and emotional destruction to be visited on Jeff. Nelson used to much zig-zagging in making his script look more complicated than it ought to be. A rape-revenge film works best on its most simplest form.
The direction by David Slade (well-known as a music video director) is actually very subdued and deliberate in its pacing. Slade doesn't fall back onto his music video experience with unnecessary quick-cut editing that's plagued his music video director brethren. Slade manages to pull off a very Hitchcockian-style of directing by letting the stage and the actors speak for the scene without much bells and whistles to clutter things. There's a few sequences where he lets the camera film things through one long, continuous take thus adding a sense of realism to the situation developing inside Jeff's home. I was really impressed with Slade's work and looking forward to see what he intends to do to follow-up Hard Candy.
The use of too much twists and turns in the script notwithstanding, Hard Candy is a tour de force piece of suspenseful filmmaking that borders on the great psychological horror films of the 70's. In fact, the subject matter on the screen lends a sense of real horror to the film with its timely release and story. Any parent or adult who knows teenagers who use MySpace.com would think hard about wanting to know more of what their kids are doing on the net. Hard Candy can be brutal at times and almost suffocating at others with little or no levity to break the tension. It's a difficult film to sit through and probably won't be the type of films for some, but just watching the performance by Ellen Page is worthy of the price of a ticket. The subject matter is very adult and straddles the line of what constitute a rated R film and one strictly for adults only. Hard Candy definitely falls on the latter. 8.5/10.
There's no denying that Hard Candy aims to put a new twist on the exploitation subgenre of the rape-revenge films that dominated the late 70's and early 80's. Brian Nelson's clearly channeling the influences from such rape-revenge fantasy films like Mastrosimone's Extremities and the very disturbing and exploitive I Spit On Your Grave (Day of the Woman) by Meir Zarchi. From the beginning the audience is shown the set-up of an adult instant messenging another person with the screen name of Thonggrrl14. Thonggrrl14 is in fact a 14 year-old teenage girl named Hayley and the adult on the other end a 32 year-old photographer named Jeff who goes by the screen name Lensman319. Jeff has an unhealthy and disturbing penchant for pubescent girls as the subject of his camera lens.
From their first meeting meeting at a coffee house where Jeff gradually begins a flirtatious conversation with the young Hayley to the point in the first act when he finally convinces her to go back to his house whcih doubles as his studio. There's really no denying the sense of unease that permeates the first act as Hard Candy gradually paints Jeff as the sexual predator that he is. There's no denying the fact that a man of his age should not be flirting and behaving as if the girl across from him is a fully-grown and developed woman of similar age. Hayley also comes across during this first act like a teenage girl dazzled by an older man who treats her older than her real age. It's really a disturbing look at just how easily an adult can seduce a child into doing things they normally shouldn't be doing.
Hayley (played by young Canadian actor Ellen Page) soons shows just how wrong and mistaken Jeff has been in picking her as his new prey. I don't use that word loosely for that is what this film truly is when boiled down to its basic component. A one-on-one three-act play (Brian Nelson's experience as a playwright shows in the stage-like sequences from beginning to end) between a predator and prey. This time around the prey has turned out to be the one who has done the hunting and the consequences on the wanna-be predator that is Jeff leads to a slow and deliberate set-up that looks like something out of Takashi Miike's Audition. Hayley's turning the tables on her stalker shows that girls her age are intelligent enough to know that what Jeff is doing is wrong. Hayley's answer to that is to be the hunter instead and fix Jeff's "problem" through what she calls as "preventive maintenance." What she calls "preventive maintenance" is bound to cause many men in the audience to sit very uncomfortably and wince on more than once occassion.
The acting job done by Ellen Page (balancing her indie work here with a turn as Kitty Pride in the upcoming X3: The Last Stand) is dazzling and really shows her as an up and coming talent that needs to be watched. She was technically 15 year-old when the film was made and already she showed a keen grasp of the script which deals with disturbing topics. There's a scene in Jeff's car as they reach his home where a passing glance of the camera at her face shows not a gullible teenager, but a determined and somewhat oft-kiltered individual who knows what she will be doing in the coming hours will be medieval harsh but in her mind justified. Patrick Wilson (last seen as Raoul in The Phantom of the Opera)as Jeff plays the would-be sexual predator admirably. His range of emotions go from outright denials of Hayley's accusations to impotent rage and desperation as his fate is described to him in Miike-like detail by his teenage captor.
If there's a flaw to mar the intense and suffocating atmosphere this stage-like film creates it would be in the script itself. At times the Hayley character becomes a one-note individual whose beyond her years demeenor seemed to cold and rehearsed. I really can't put the blame for this on Ms. Page, but on the writer himself. It seems like Brian Nelson is trying too hard to add twist and turns on the story being told. He seems to enjoy overmuch his ability to tug back and forth on his audiences' emotional investment in the film and the two characters. He actually pulls off the trick of making the sexual predator earn the audiences' sympathy at what is about to be done to him. But instead of continuing on with that tangent and thus putting Hayley on a darker and more sinister light, Nelson backs off and pulls the audience back to wanting physical and emotional destruction to be visited on Jeff. Nelson used to much zig-zagging in making his script look more complicated than it ought to be. A rape-revenge film works best on its most simplest form.
The direction by David Slade (well-known as a music video director) is actually very subdued and deliberate in its pacing. Slade doesn't fall back onto his music video experience with unnecessary quick-cut editing that's plagued his music video director brethren. Slade manages to pull off a very Hitchcockian-style of directing by letting the stage and the actors speak for the scene without much bells and whistles to clutter things. There's a few sequences where he lets the camera film things through one long, continuous take thus adding a sense of realism to the situation developing inside Jeff's home. I was really impressed with Slade's work and looking forward to see what he intends to do to follow-up Hard Candy.
The use of too much twists and turns in the script notwithstanding, Hard Candy is a tour de force piece of suspenseful filmmaking that borders on the great psychological horror films of the 70's. In fact, the subject matter on the screen lends a sense of real horror to the film with its timely release and story. Any parent or adult who knows teenagers who use MySpace.com would think hard about wanting to know more of what their kids are doing on the net. Hard Candy can be brutal at times and almost suffocating at others with little or no levity to break the tension. It's a difficult film to sit through and probably won't be the type of films for some, but just watching the performance by Ellen Page is worthy of the price of a ticket. The subject matter is very adult and straddles the line of what constitute a rated R film and one strictly for adults only. Hard Candy definitely falls on the latter. 8.5/10.
78 of 98 people found the following review helpful
By Mark It Zero
It's safe to say that before the release of the film I was basically foaming at the mouth in anticipation. I don't know what it was that drew me so strongly to it, but there was something about it that just wet my appetite for great cinema.
So, the week came when it was to be released, and Friday rolled around. I went to see it - and left utterly disappointed. I don't know what I expected from the film, from all the press I read I expected simple torture then an end to the film, but what I got, I later realized, was so much more.
The story, although topical to some degree, is at first glance a story of one person wanting to teach another a lesson about the "naughty" things they do, ALA Seven and Saw. But as the film unfolds the true faces are shown, and they're ugly. Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson turn in flawless performances, as they're the only main actors in the film, Sandra Oh plays a small, yet somewhat vital role, and then there's that one guy at the cafe.
The reason I detested this movie was for one simple reason - manipulation. NEVER in my life have I seen a film where my beliefs and feelings concerning the characters has shifted so furiously between one and the other. You sincerely believe that Jeff is an innocent man and that Haley is simply a sociopath. As the story unfolds, if you see the film in the same light as I did, by the end you'll be completely worn out, and left with a feeling of bleakness.
With most recent horror films focusing mainly on the gore aspect, and very little story, albeit one as complex as this, it was incredibly refreshing to see a horror/suspense film that was something that could just possibly top Hitchcock in his finest hour.
A true masterpiece.
So, the week came when it was to be released, and Friday rolled around. I went to see it - and left utterly disappointed. I don't know what I expected from the film, from all the press I read I expected simple torture then an end to the film, but what I got, I later realized, was so much more.
The story, although topical to some degree, is at first glance a story of one person wanting to teach another a lesson about the "naughty" things they do, ALA Seven and Saw. But as the film unfolds the true faces are shown, and they're ugly. Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson turn in flawless performances, as they're the only main actors in the film, Sandra Oh plays a small, yet somewhat vital role, and then there's that one guy at the cafe.
The reason I detested this movie was for one simple reason - manipulation. NEVER in my life have I seen a film where my beliefs and feelings concerning the characters has shifted so furiously between one and the other. You sincerely believe that Jeff is an innocent man and that Haley is simply a sociopath. As the story unfolds, if you see the film in the same light as I did, by the end you'll be completely worn out, and left with a feeling of bleakness.
With most recent horror films focusing mainly on the gore aspect, and very little story, albeit one as complex as this, it was incredibly refreshing to see a horror/suspense film that was something that could just possibly top Hitchcock in his finest hour.
A true masterpiece.
51 of 64 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase
I will admit something up front. I am a sucker for a tight, clever script where there is plenty of verbal sparring. Intelligent (might I even say--"thought provoking") drama gets me off. Two of my favorite classics are "The Lion in Winter" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff?"--two powerful, but wickedly funny, verbal bloodbaths based on plays. Now I'm not saying "Hard Candy" falls into that league, but it is certainly refreshing to watch an adult film with an actual point-of-view that doesn't dumb itself down for mass consumption.
Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson are both suberb, and there are enough twists and action to keep the viewer guessing through their game of cat-and-mouse. This is a sweet antidote to the usual summer blockbuster--one that will make you think and one that you will remember.
Not to provide a spoiler, but the film does wrap itself up rather tidily--which keeps it from being truly brilliant (I'd actually give it 4 1/2 stars). But I was riveted throughout.
A word of warning, however, I imagine a lot of people might not like this film. But if you are a fan of well-scripted, well- acted drama and open to the subject matter (might be too controversial or even too graphic for some), I'd definitely give this a try. KGHarris, 9/06.
Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson are both suberb, and there are enough twists and action to keep the viewer guessing through their game of cat-and-mouse. This is a sweet antidote to the usual summer blockbuster--one that will make you think and one that you will remember.
Not to provide a spoiler, but the film does wrap itself up rather tidily--which keeps it from being truly brilliant (I'd actually give it 4 1/2 stars). But I was riveted throughout.
A word of warning, however, I imagine a lot of people might not like this film. But if you are a fan of well-scripted, well- acted drama and open to the subject matter (might be too controversial or even too graphic for some), I'd definitely give this a try. KGHarris, 9/06.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
You just messed with the wrong teenager Mr.!!
Firstly I think this movie should be required viewing for every male ever convicted of any sort of perverted sex crime against a minor. Read more
Published 15 days ago by Natja Kristy
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good little thriller.
This is an amazing film in that it mainly is two characters playing cat and mouse throughout the movie. The twist is in figuring out who is the cat and who is the mouse?
Published 18 days ago by Nobody
5.0 out of 5 stars
What a Surprise!
I'm a pretty harsh critic when it comes to movies. When I read other viewers reviews, I many times wonder what were they thinking, the movie just plan stunk. Read more
Published 2 months ago by K.K
5.0 out of 5 stars
Well Written, good pacing
This is definitely delicate subject matter for some people, but the way the was paced, directed, and written, this is one of my favorite psychological thrillers of all time. Read more
Published 2 months ago by S. Grose
5.0 out of 5 stars
Classic
I owned this movie a few years ago. I actually had the DVD, but my friend lost it. I purchased the Blu-ray, its just like I remembered. Really good acting in this movie.
Published 2 months ago by Kent Mauresmo
5.0 out of 5 stars
HARD CANDY
Surprise! The predator becomes prey in this hard gripping drama. The young actress in this film, is truly off the hook in her pursuit of this pedophile.
Published 2 months ago by simone rivers
4.0 out of 5 stars
"You've been stalking me?"
Sometimes things are not so complicated. Take an interesting script, put two great actors in a room and you have yourself a really good film. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Sebastian Fernandez
5.0 out of 5 stars
Couldn't find it elsewhere
I only purchased it online due to literally no where around me having it. I scoured high and low in stores, online at stores, no where had this movie. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Mayo2198
4.0 out of 5 stars
odd but good
I watched this for a class assignment and it actually was pretty good. The ending is very unexpected and the story line keeps you captivated. Good little indie movie.
Published 2 months ago by gurr
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of The Most Underrated Moves Of All Time
There are two reasons why this movie is a classic: The way in which the subject matter was handled, and Ellen Page's superb acting. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Jay
