Hard Candy ☆☆☆☆

This is yet another film I have wanted to see for a while now, actually years as it was released in 2005, but put off because I thought it would be too disturbing. I am now of the firm belief that Buried has scarred me for life and will never find anything else disturbing again.

So, I braved Hard Candy. It stars Ellen Page (Juno, Inception) and Patrick Wilson (Phantom of the Opera, Watchmen) as a fourteen year old girl and the potential paedophile she is going to destroy.
Sandra Oh gets an appearance for a few minutes, but like all decent intensive dramas the focus is on the main characters with little interference from the outside world.

It begins 'innocently' enough with some Internet chat, then a meeting in a coffee shop where a very young and naive looking Page childishly flirts with a seemingly caring and almost harmless Wilson. Things go well enough that Page tells Wilson she feels safe enough to go to his place and listen to a bootleg of a band she adores and missed in concert because she was too young to be out that late. Then the real fun begins as Page turns things around on Wilson and becomes the one in charge, all part of her quest to destroy the man who has killed a young girl.

Ellen Page is extraordinary in this film, only probably 15 or 16 when she made it her youthful looks and and mature demeanour as fourteen year old Haley are in conflict as you try to take in her actions while she bounces around the screen. Her eyes are perhaps the most persuasive feature of her acting, they are completely dead at times in the most threatening way, and then they sparkle as she takes delight in making this man pay for his apparent crimes.

What I found truly clever about this movie is that I was left unsure if Wilson was actually guilty of anything for quite a while, and then to wonder if maybe it was just voyeurism without committing a physical crime. Patrick Wilson makes a very convincing wronged man, his fear and his confessions feel absolutely real, and a very small part of me for the briefest of moments veered toward feeling sorry for him. It was an exceptionally brief moment. But this is a testament to Wilsons acting ability, who I have never heard lauded in the sphere of film and television, and yet to be able to play this man so convincingly deserves a big pat on the back. He is possibly overlooked because of the outstanding performance by Ellen Page, of whom I was already a big fan of because of her work in Juno and Smart People.

This is not a slasher movie, it is an intense portrait of what SHOULD happen to predators on the internet, and a lesson for all who meet strangers. It reminded me of a recent Channel 4 documentary called talhotblond about the misrepresentation that can occur online and the sometimes tragic consequences from this, although Haley and Jeff are from the start explicit about their ages and identities...to a point.

You cannot help but cheer Page's little psycho on, and there is no doubt she is psychotic - but a vengeful and righteous one. There are twists and turns as you try to decipher who is in the wrong, and then a slow build of fear which culminates in one of the most satisfying endings I have seen for a while.

The acting is superb, the story is horrific but played out wonderfully, and the direction by Brit David Slade is akin to a horror film without the gore. It reminds me a lot of the rather wonderful and terrifying Misery, but in reverse where the bad guy is trapped and the good guy keeping him there.

I really enjoyed this, but like I said at the start, Buried may well have scarred me into not finding it quite so terrifying as I was lead to believe. It is scary, but also rather beautiful and poetic at the same time, a definite recommend.