Former music video director, David Slade, in short, presents us with Hard Candy, a pretentious work hoping to raise enough eyebrows in order to garner a bit of notoriety within the business (as well as a bigger budget), while exploiting–not only the possibilities of the act of artistic creation–but the horror genre as well as the whole of film. A masterful accomplishment indeed.
Jeff Kohlver (Patrick Wilson), a 32 year-old photographer, solicits the company of 14 year-old Hayley Stark (Ellen Page) via the internet. After meeting at a local Los Angeles coffee shop named Nighthawks, Hayley coerces Jeff to take her to his home in hopes of validating whether or not her escort is a pedophile. After finding evidence to confirm her suspicions, Hayley precedes to castrate her companion.
It is obvious from the first frame that Hard Candy is a controlled film, that much is obvious. However, I oftentimes have my reservations concerning works by independent filmmakers who are attempting to “push the envelope” as it where when their alibi is compensation for a lack of budget. This isn’t to imply that the film is gratuitous by any means, quite the contrary, yet the problem herein lies in that Slade puts forth a proposition to his audience: Pick a side lest you be accused of moral apathy, a crime greater than what either of the characters onscreen are or have been engaged in. Of course, Slate doesn’t allow easy choices nor should he because life is never black-and-white. This said, the problem with Hard Candy is that it tries too hard, especially three-quarters of the way through the film as the plot becomes forcibly convoluted and thereby overlong for the mere sake of the filmmakers attempting to assure themselves that their veil of ambiguity is dense enough, that their thoughts upon the subject are not didactic, and that they have therefore made a challenging, artistic film.
And indeed they have. But, as many mainstream critics complain of horror being gratuitous, we can just as easily state that most “serious” films are the converse: arbitrarily substantive, the more colloquial term in this regard being “elitist.” What I mean by this is–much like a graduate student in creative writing–screenwriter Brian Nelson becomes so consumed with saying something that he forgets that he’s telling a story. Granted, I like a film that makes me think, but I don’t like being told that I have to if I don’t so desire. A truly great work of art can be enjoyed on many levels, of which pure escapism as well as intellectually are prerequisites in most cases. In this regard, the surface effortlessness of a true work of art is not to be found with Hard Candy, for such art causes one’s mental gerbil to begin running without one being aware of it. With Slate’s production, we must take out our cognition folders while watching the movie lest we get nothing from the work whatsoever. In this sense, controversy is often equitable with thought-provoking, but the end product has to be of a nature where a person would want to go back, i.e. Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible, to see if the film offers more a second or third time in order to merit the label of “remarkable,” yet I don’t believe many will be desirous, to say nothing of willing, for another round with Slate’s baby.
In a nutshell, the filmmakers are hoping to make an intentionally controversial film which confronts the issues of morality as they breech such topics such as pornography, criminology, psychology, and feminism. What makes Hard Candy less effective than Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita is the fact that Kubrick’s primarily concern is to narrate, whereas Slate’s is to make sure he’s not giving himself away. Of course, anyone with an agenda such as this is obviously hiding one and, regardless of how well-concealed it may be, if the creator is adamant one way or the other concerning how the subject matter should be viewed, his prejudicial residue will inevitably seep over into his or her art.
What we are treated to is a situation in which the door of political correctness is exposed as swinging only one way in that if we side with Jeff, we are automatically guilty. However, to blur this line of interpretative demarcation, Slate issues a scene in which Hayley calls her friend–much too coolly and calmly after the horrendous crime she’s committed–and nonchalantly asks whether or not they can catch a movie atop the sardonic witticisms which she is obviously reveling in after she finishes with Jeff. Thus, it is “implied” that Hayley is not exactly stable. Now, aside from the loophole that the screenwriter wrote himself into at the climax concerning the revelation that Hayley is of legal age, we now have the problem that regardless of Hayley’s mental stability, it should not effect our view and judgment of Jeff, but of course Slate knows most audiences rely more upon Pathos than Logos when staring at a screen and, well, let’s just say that his implicit consensus to meet the viewer on common ground, well . . .
As clever as the film attempts to be, as I previously suspected and anticipated, Slate– during an interview–refers to the character of Jeff as “despicable,” thus giving away his stance upon how he views his creation. As such, when Hayley snorts in disgust at the notion that a court would undoubtedly find Jeff innocent on grounds of mental illness, implying that by no stretch of the imagination is she willing to consider the notion of pedophilia as a disease, we hereby understand that Slate was using the character as a mouthpiece, which obliterates all of the sweat and blood that the filmmakers committed to being “objective,” a trademark, from what I hear, to be a sign of great art.
What’s left is indeed an argument-inducing scenario, but not the one the filmmakers hoped to initiate: How can a set of self-professed artists have the audacity to push (as oppose to offer) their social ethics upon their audience by cloaking their intents using the name of neutrality? Is it any wonder than many critics integrated the term “exploitive” in their review of the film?
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
