film: hard candy - a shocker of a film

[sn0wburt0n]

i saw it this film a few weeks ago. i would highly recommend it!! very intriguing and nice character development. i like the twists and turns it takes you through. 4/5 stars here!

 

[fungus44]

I loved it. My wife and I saw it for our 4th anniversary (a housemate said this was 'sick') and it was amazing.

 

[Greg_Moves]

I really loved the first half of the movie, but then they brought in Sandra Oh as the pesky neighbor, and it turned into really bad, faux-suspense. Overall, I'd say it's not a bad way to spend 90 minutes, but it could've used a rewrite.

SPOILER:

Why did they wimp out with the castration? I thought that that would've added so much more had she actually followed through with it.

 

[pillsnapa]

She did follow through with it!

 

[vibr8tor]

no she didn't.

 

[Psychedelic Gleam]

This was total shit. Absolute, unbelievable shit.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

Whoopty doo... a guy gets his balls chopped off... (not really!!!@!!!@$21 omg so clever...)

Just because its queasy shocking cinema doesn't make it good.

This whole movie is so unbelievable.

The script was shit, the lines almost painful...

What the girl can do all the detective work better than the cops? Fuck that.

And she is a great actor but in this part she overacts, painfully so, playing someone who acts like not one girl her age would...

Oh and a director/writer absolutely FAILS when he makes you empathize and sympathize with with the pedophile...

Really what was the message here? This guy wasn't creepy, maybe if they made him disgustingly grotesque I would of changed my mind but no, here comes a girl who gets HERSELF drunk, then accuses the guy of trying to get her drunk, drugs his ass up and tortures him till he kills himself... What is the message? Not even pedophiles deserve torture? Someone told me this film had a "feminist" message? Seemed to me that the girl had just as many problems as the guy...

I honestly can't imagine someone thinking this is "good" cinema...

Audition (mentioned above) is a far better "torture/revenge" movie in my book...

Unbelievable, poorly conceived, poorly executed "shock" film (shocking in so far as its the first film ever to make one sympathetic to a pedophile...)

 

[dshock]

But he didn't get his balls cut off, she just made him think that

 

[kknd_cf]

I loved this film, extremely intresting but

NSFW:

After seeing those goddamn BME vids the castration scene really didn't bother me much. I hate the internet!

 

[dshock]

^Whats BME?

 

[wanderlust]

www.bmezine.com
a body modification website with everything from simple earlobe piercings to male castration (for fun) and other hardcore mods.
pretty much one of the best resources on the net for body mod information, questions and photos.

 

[Sun]

I too thought she cut his balls off or at least one. Doesn't she show him in the jar. He's in genuine pain. I didn't see her prepare someone elses balls.....what's going on here?!

 

[Beatlebot]

^ I'd tell you, but it's a good idea to use the spoiler tags for things like this, people.

NSFW:

She did not cut off his balls. She had a video tape of the procedure she played in the television, remember how he got the video out of the machine later? She had numbed the area with ice and, as I understand it, tied a string around his balls so he would feel them being tugged at and think they had been removed. I forget what it was she had in the jar, but it was something she had prepared earlier.

I highly doubt he would have been able to do all the things he did later if his balls had been removed, but then yeah, it wasn't a very realistic film anyway.

As for the film itself, the cinematography was excellent. I thought the actiing was very good, especially on the part of the girl. The storyline itself? Not so much.

The story didn't give me the sense of twists and turns so much as the sense it was being made up as it went along. By the end of the film, I didn't give a toss what happened to either one of them and I found the ending pretty hard to believe. I wasn't shocked so much, as grossed out by the torure scenes and although it wasn't the worst film I've ever seen by a long shot, I wouldn't bother seeing it again.

 

[dapurpman]

janelle played an very important part in the whole thing. she was jeffs ex girlffried n' jeff wanted to get back with her cause he still loved her.

hayley uses this to get jeff to do "u know what at the end". if he didnt, she would have revealed that he is a pedophile to his ex.

 

[wanderlust]

doesn't jeff say, as he gets up after freeing himself 'i'm all there, i'm all there'?
just to put that issue to rest.


otherwise i like the film. it wasn't what i expected it to be.
i have had this thing for the colors in movies lately and this one had nice, deep hues throughout. in fact many times the hues with the girl and the background would match to accentuate the feeling that the movie was trying to push at you.
the whole neighbor thing was annoying, but i suppose that after dragging everything on that long they needed some catalyst to make her step into the final action

 

[mariacallas]

oh, and on the movie. I found it somewhat entertaining; I liked the film visually and thought the camera work was really well done. Plot wise, not so much. Way too far fetched and hoaky for me.

Ditto. I found the actress portraying the girl annoying tho.

 

[hunters_hoot]

I thought it was alright, it definately keeps you watching!

 

[indelibleface]

I found that the movie started off really well, but the ending just seemed really implausible. I don't know, the movie didn't really win me over, but it had its moments.

 

[QuestionEverything]

I just finished watching this film. I went into it never having heard of it. I did look it up last night in here and skimmed over the first few posts in this thread.

doesn't jeff say, as he gets up after freeing himself 'i'm all there, i'm all there'?
just to put that issue to rest.

Spoiler: Response to above

He does. He also pulls off the clip she had put on his balls and then even goes one step further to pull out the Castration Procedure video tape. I am at a loss for how anyone could still think after all three of those actions that she went through with it. I thought they went too far in making it obvious she didn't.

i have had this thing for the colors in movies lately and this one had nice, deep hues throughout. in fact many times the hues with the girl and the background would match to accentuate the feeling that the movie was trying to push at you.
the whole neighbor thing was annoying, but i suppose that after dragging everything on that long they needed some catalyst to make her step into the final action

I noticed the colors too. I loved the look of this film and I think the use of color played a big part in that.

As far as the actual story goes, I wouldn't watch it again. It wasn't overly gruesome like I had been led to belive by the first couple of posts here. It did succeed in making me despise the girl though. I'm not sure yet whether that was because of the story or the over acting or a combination of the two.

I turned it off at the credits thinking, 'meh'.

 

[vibr8tor]

Ditto. I found the actress portraying the girl annoying tho.

i'm with you on that too. i almost don't wanna see Juno cuz she bugged me so much.

 

[tribal girl]

^Yeah, she annoyed the hell out of me in Hard Candy too. I just wanted to give her a good slap. But I dunno, I just kinda fell for her in Juno. It's not a brilliant film but I definitely enjoyed it. I think she's adorable and comes across as being a really genuine person.