Way back in 2009, a young director from the land Down Under made a debut horror film called THE LOVED ONES. While not the most original of stories, the movie was an impressive debut, showcasing the talents of the young director. Fans of the film have waited, patiently, for a follow up from the director, Sean Byrne. It took him six years to make another movie, but my god what a movie it is.
THE DEVIL'S CANDY is a haunted house movie, it's a possession movie, it's a serial killer movie, it's a metal movie and it's an artistic psychothriller all wrapped up in one canvas. There are so many things about this film that could have gone so wrong, but Byrne makes so many good choices along the way that it all ends up working incredibly.
We open with a little bit of backstory, an odd man, of the Baby Huey variety, hears some very demonic voices. His method of drowning them out is to fill the air with the sweet sound of reverb guitar, blasted through his Marshall amp on a Flying V (those will both play integral roles to come). Mommy doesn't like the noise this late at night, though, but our disturbed rocker doesn't like to be told what to do. Fast forward to a family looking to buy the home. Dad is an artist, wishing to create art that reflects his dark interests, but stuck making butterfly commissions to pay the bills. His daughter is a little protégé rocker and Mom plays that role of the one stuck being the responsible one in the trio.
Very early on, we start to see that all is not right in the house. Dad starts zoning out, awash in visions, which are resulting in some very dark and disturbing art that is also some of the best work he's done. The distractions are causing him to lose his tight relationship with his daughter, who is struggling at school and has become the fascination of our Baby Huey, which is where the plot strands start to tie together.
The movie is an exploration of family, with a great cast who are not your typical Brady Bunch, but have their own tight bonds. This is, also, very much a rumination on evil. We look right into the eye of evil throughout the film (in literal ways) and the movie plays with the ideas of Satan and the devil, without ever resorting to the sort of cheesy pentagram lore that ruins so many indie horror flicks with lesser writers and directors. We have human evil, in the form of a child killer. We have symbolic evil in the name of the art dealer. We have very supernatural evil taking place within the house. All are forms of the devil. The movie culminates into a tightly woven finale that pits our family against the killer and plays cleverly with an idea that even something that might have seemed evil can be used for good in the right hands.
The direction by Byrne is superb, using some broodingly dark images that could have seemed totally cheesy in the wrong hands, but work to craft a uniformly consistent aesthetic here. Ethan Embry is someone who has never really shown me much before, but does a great job of playing a father who starts unraveling and losing control. The soundtrack is excellent, using metal music in a way that doesn't feel like a tacked on 90s soundtrack, but makes the metal part of the core of the film, including some great ambient noise by the group Sunn O))))).
I heard so many good things after this screened at HorrorHound and was pleasantly surprised that it met all of those expectations.
THE DEVIL'S CANDY is a haunted house movie, it's a possession movie, it's a serial killer movie, it's a metal movie and it's an artistic psychothriller all wrapped up in one canvas. There are so many things about this film that could have gone so wrong, but Byrne makes so many good choices along the way that it all ends up working incredibly.
We open with a little bit of backstory, an odd man, of the Baby Huey variety, hears some very demonic voices. His method of drowning them out is to fill the air with the sweet sound of reverb guitar, blasted through his Marshall amp on a Flying V (those will both play integral roles to come). Mommy doesn't like the noise this late at night, though, but our disturbed rocker doesn't like to be told what to do. Fast forward to a family looking to buy the home. Dad is an artist, wishing to create art that reflects his dark interests, but stuck making butterfly commissions to pay the bills. His daughter is a little protégé rocker and Mom plays that role of the one stuck being the responsible one in the trio.
Very early on, we start to see that all is not right in the house. Dad starts zoning out, awash in visions, which are resulting in some very dark and disturbing art that is also some of the best work he's done. The distractions are causing him to lose his tight relationship with his daughter, who is struggling at school and has become the fascination of our Baby Huey, which is where the plot strands start to tie together.
The movie is an exploration of family, with a great cast who are not your typical Brady Bunch, but have their own tight bonds. This is, also, very much a rumination on evil. We look right into the eye of evil throughout the film (in literal ways) and the movie plays with the ideas of Satan and the devil, without ever resorting to the sort of cheesy pentagram lore that ruins so many indie horror flicks with lesser writers and directors. We have human evil, in the form of a child killer. We have symbolic evil in the name of the art dealer. We have very supernatural evil taking place within the house. All are forms of the devil. The movie culminates into a tightly woven finale that pits our family against the killer and plays cleverly with an idea that even something that might have seemed evil can be used for good in the right hands.
The direction by Byrne is superb, using some broodingly dark images that could have seemed totally cheesy in the wrong hands, but work to craft a uniformly consistent aesthetic here. Ethan Embry is someone who has never really shown me much before, but does a great job of playing a father who starts unraveling and losing control. The soundtrack is excellent, using metal music in a way that doesn't feel like a tacked on 90s soundtrack, but makes the metal part of the core of the film, including some great ambient noise by the group Sunn O))))).
I heard so many good things after this screened at HorrorHound and was pleasantly surprised that it met all of those expectations.