February 22, 2008

Hard Candy (2006)

Hard Candy is the story of 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.

It stars Ellen Page (Juno), Patrick Wilson, and Sandra Oh.

This movie was very controversial when it came out, a young girl meeting a much older man she met on the internet, for what he thinks will be a good time with a 14 year old girl.
Hayley however, is not quite so innocent. Everything she says to Jeff is carefully planned, she knows what to say to him to make him think he's going to be having sex with her at some point during their meet-up.
She has other plans, devious ones.
She psychologically tortures Jeff, ties him up, plans to castrate him, all in an attempt to get him to confess to kidnapping and raping another girl who is now missing.
This is at times, hard to watch, not because of the graphic scenes, but because the script was just lacking in a few places.
Page ends up acting terrified when her character is clearly in control, always had control, and so the mixed emotions she displays, come out all wrong.
The dialog is also very quiet. We had the volume all the way up and missed some of their lines no doubt.

The director also tries to hard too make twists and turns in the story as he goes. Up, down, over here, over there, wait, where were we going with this again?

Overall, the movie was gripping, suspenseful, and timely in this day and age of almost every teen on the planet, having an internet connection and myspace page.
I give it a 7 on a scale of 1-10.