Hard Candy

Okay, it's this simple:

When a movie is so bad that it makes me sympathise with the paedophile, It really does suck.

Seriously, these storms recently? Caused by Hard Candy sucking so hard that it caused a depression, leading to high winds.

Really. Suck. Sucked. Hard.

Okay, the story goes that Jeff hangs around chat rooms looking for underage girls to foist himself upon. Hayley is 14. They meet. They go to his place. She spends way too long "getting revenge" for all the other girls.

Seriously. Paedophile. 14 year-old victim. The target of sympathies should be really easy here. But still, I wanted her dead. I wanted Jeff to break free and bash her stupid face in, even if just to shut her up.

I guess they were trying to do some sort of "tables-turned", "don't you feel dirty rooting for the child-fucker?" kind of game. But even that failed. The final "twist" was, I guess, supposed to make the viewers feel guilty for supporting the bad guy, but it failed miserably.

We were left not even knowing if Jeff really was a paedophile.

Hayley is boring, dull, and unemotional. Even when supposedly extracting revenge, it just comes out ... flat.

I don't know whether it was bad directing, bad script, or simply a very bad actress.

But whatever. It sucked.

And bad script? Hayley does all the running in the movie's opening scenes. It's she who suggests they meet. It's she who badgers Jeff into taking her back to his place. It's she who, when offered water goes and makes screwdrivers. Even Hayley's speech about "you're the adult" doesn't soften that crap. It gave voice to the standard paedophile's defence and then attempted to destroy it, but failed.

I guess there will be those who'll claim I missed the point. That it really was a searing indictment of whatever the hell. But I don't care.

This. Movie. Sucked.

Doombreed rating: 1/2. Barely.