The Devil's Candy (2015) Reviews

• Better Than Average Horror

  gregsrants2015-09-20

  Back in 2009, director Sean Byrne brought The Lovely Ones to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The film won the Midnight Madness People's Choice Award, but it somehow never really caught on amongst horror film enthusiasts. I myself must admit that I missed it. I missed screening it at the 2009 Festival and I made the mistake of overlooking the feature for a few more years. When I eventually did screen the film in 2011 I was shocked at how such a fun, violent and well shot horror film escaped my screen habits. I began to champion the film amongst my tiny circle of friends and even though the film has a release date in 2009, I listed The Lovely Ones as the best horror film of 2011. So it is with incredible anticipation that I screen The Devil's Candy, Byrne's latest film which will again compete for the People's Choice Award at this year's Midnight Madness. Unrecognizable Ethan Embry plays Jesse – husband of Astrid (Shiri Appleby) and father to teenage Zooey (Kiara Glasco). Jesse is an artist without a muse who uses heavy metal music to both propel his adrenaline and inspire his paintings. Looking for a change, Jessie and Astrid put a bid on a remote Texas home. The house is ample for the family of three but the real selling point is the large barn on the property that Jesse foresees as his art studio. The home has a selling price that is ridiculous for the market. But there is a catch. The realtor is obligated to reveal the history of the home. And the history is death. Jesse and Astrid seem unfazed when they learn that a mother fell down the stairs and the husband killed himself in his grief of the loss. But an early scene shows us a different story. One of murder and maniacal behavior. The house may be haunted with supernatural forces tormenting its residents to freakish behavior. And Jesse and his family might just be in situational danger that could cost them their lives. It doesn't take long for the things to start going awry when the family moves into their new home. Jesse is particularly affected and he begins to paint on canvas pictures that represent the dark and the macabre. His involvement with his work draws a rift between him and his daughter. But these fractured feelings are put aside when Ray (Pruitt Taylor Vince), the large homicidal son of the former owners of the home begins to lurk around Jesse's family. Ray is unstable. He hears voices in his head that can only be muted by the loud obstruction of noise generated from his electrical guitar and amp. He rocks and rolls with intensity while further slipping from sanity. Ray is a killer. The worst kind of killer. A killer of children. His weapon is his massive frame (well, that and any large rock he can get his giants palms around). Ray's rampage is exhibited in a shallow grave not too far from his childhood home. It's here luggage containing the remains of children he has killed and cut up are buried. Ray's next target is Zooey but the young lass will not go quietly or without a fight. Fueled by satanic forces, Ray is persistent in his pursuit of Zooey. And his objective will leave a trail of bodies in his wake. The Devil's Candy is the brainchild of Sean Byrne who catapulted himself onto the horror scene with 2009's The Loved Ones. Byrne both wrote and directed The Devil's Candy and although it is not as refreshing as The Loved Ones, it is a competent and crowd pleasing horror film that has the look and feel of a Rob Zombie film but with much better results. Pruitt Taylor Vince is perfectly cast as the tormented Ray and Byrne keeps the film simple with a trickled down call sheet and a story that never fails to move forward. Although The Devil's Candy may be considered horror, it is more psychological thriller. There are some elements of gore but the crux of the film is on the individual characters all of which are interesting and authentic. With a heavy helping of heavy guitar riffs, The Devil's Candy is a surprising hard rock pleaser filled with atmosphere and sweat. It was given a world premiere as part of the Midnight Madness series at this year's Toronto International Film Festival and it will surely find an audience upon release. http://theintestinalfortitude.com/

• don't let the cliché description put you off, this is a great horror.

  georgeaaronterencerevell2017-09-15

  When i first saw the description of this movie, I thought "oh yeah, just another possession movie ... yawn, probably going to be a waste of my evening" ... but then I took a look at how many positive reviews It was getting and decided to give it a go ... and to no disappointment! This movie was well done, lots of original material, well crafted cinematic horror, good acting, good plot, actually reasonably scary and suspenseful... it's a solid horror movie. I recommend it strongly to other horror fans and trust me I don't give that recommendation out easily, there is plenty of 'horror crap' out there, but this is horror gold. Good job.

• Horror Worth Watching

  parsonm22017-03-31

  Wow a great Horror Movie. I was slightly put off by the cover art of this movie and almost missed this one thinking it was a slasher film, it is not. I am not a fan of simple gore slasher movies and I visually categorized this as something akin to "Devil's Rejects" which is the type of movie I despise. Fortunately, I stumbled upon a good review of this movie which made me pick it up. Anyway, this may be one of the better horror movies of 2015. Pruitt Taylor Vince performance is very memorable and disturbing. Everything from his demeanor to that dirty red tracksuit. Ethan Embry (Late Phases, Incident on a Mountain Road) is no stranger to horror films but I barely recognized due to his long hair and grunge rock appearance, he gives an outstanding performance of a disturbed painter and father who receives an overwhelming urge to paint a sinister painting that is invading his mind. Interesting to note, the voices that the antagonist and the protagonist are hearing are NOT THE SAME. They are different which I think becomes apparent by the end of the film. This movie is full of tension with strong supernatural undertones. There is surprisingly little gore in this movie though we see multiple scenes of bloody aftermaths.

• Brilliant horror that never cheats

  jtindahouse2017-03-26

  The biggest problem modern horror films seem to have is making the audience care about their characters. Generally, they are so cliché, bland, dumb and unrealistic that within the first 10 minutes of the film no one cares any longer about their fate. So when I saw early on in 'The Devil's Candy' that the main characters were a family of hippy bogans, I'll admit I was worried for the sake of the film. I make no mistake about the fact that these are not people I can relate to in any way, and have had almost universally negative experiences with them in my life. On the contrary though, that turned out to be the strongest element to the film. I loved this family. They were charming, caring, relatable and down to Earth. I genuinely cared about their fate, and that is a large part of what made 'The Devil's Candy' a very fine horror film. The second thing I loved about this film is that is never cheats. No scare is a false one. Nothing is suddenly revealed to be a dream sequence. No super-natural elements were required simply to make the story work. That is incredibly rare in the history of horror movies, let alone modern ones. Writer/director Sean Byrne needs to be absolutely commended on this. It is a brilliant effort on his part. There really isn't a lot of negatives I can come up with for this film. The only thing holding it back from being a '10' was an unforgettable ending. Other than that it is basically flawless. Fantastic acting, a simple yet brilliant and effective story, genuine scares that never cheat and characters that are both likable and relatable. In an industry that is seemingly completely lost as to how to make a good horror film, 'The Devil's Candy' needs to be studied by everyone in Hollywood. It is a very good film.

• Disturbing

  farchettiensis2017-04-25

  This movie is tense, disturbing, with some heavy imagery, gripping, and has great acting. It's not so much scary as it's disturbing - different things, the way I see it. Watching it was an intense experience. There's some lack of imagination in the underlying plot, in portraying evil and how it acts through people, but I guess that this would be asking too much of an already good movie. It lacks subtlety in key moments. Decisive scenes where the main theme of the movie are discussed are presented hurried way; they aren't properly explored. To be fair, this shouldn't be generalized, though. But I do feel the focus ended up being too much on the unfolding of the actions - a classic goal to goal rather aspect to aspect sort of thing. The scarcity of good horror genre movies is really saddening, few artists are willing to delve into the nature of fascinating subjects such as evil and fear, but I'd say this movie is one of the good ones and I definitely recommend it.