It turns out the devil’s candy is not just Good and Plenty’s, as I had previously assumed.
Ever since the 80’s, horror movies have been all about the villains. Say the names Freddy and Jason, and even people who have never seen a scary movie know immediately who you are talking about. Say the names Nancy and Alice, and you’ll get shrugs (or maybe a guess about the members of Heart). The fact is, horror franchises are built around the bad guys. The irony of that is that the secret to crafting a compelling horror film actually lies in giving us protagonists that we care about. The Devil’s Candy knows that secret, and therein lies the film’s strengths.
The Hellman family are made up of husband Jesse, wife Astrid, and pre-teen daughter Zooey. Jesse is a semi-successful painter who has passed his love of heavy metal along to his daughter. They get a sweetheart of a deal on a new house because, you guessed it, it was the site of a grisly murder (or as the real estate agent puts it, an unfortunate accident). Before long, Jesse is the recipient of some disturbing new inspiration, as he finds himself blacking out while he works and painting horrific images of tortured children. He and his wife really start to worry when one of his episodes results in an image of Zooey burning in flames. Meanwhile, a previous resident of the house is showing up to try and make friends with young Zooey, attempting to gift her the same cherry red flying V guitar he used to play to silence the commands of Satan in his head.
I’m generally not a big fan of movies where a family moves into a house that tries to posess one of them (typically the dad). Sure I’m aware that there are good entries into the genre (I’ve seen The Shining, guys), but there are also a whole lot of mediocre ones, and they mostly tend to follow the same beats. The Devil’s Candy kind of turns all that on its head. True to form, Jesse is affected by the posession, but he doesn’t become a danger to his family – that threat comes from outside the home. The film, with it’s Metallica-heavy soundtrack, is a bit of a riff on heavy metal mythology. (Riff – see what I did there?) The antagonist uses a guitar to drown out the devil, the gallery that wants to invest in Jesse’s new painting style is called Belial, even the surname of the central family has “Hell” in it. I’m not sure it all adds up to much more than a bit of fun for the metalheads out there, but as one of those metalheads, I’m here for it.
As I mentioned up top, the real strength of the movie is making us care about the Hellmans. Mom and dad are both loving and cool, and young Zooey is incredibly magnetic. They are such a charismatic bunch, with such believable chemistry, that the film doesn’t have to work very hard to make us care when they are in peril. It’s lucky for me, because I didn’t find the film’s villain quite as convincing. You see, my kids used to watch a terrible live action Disney show called “Jessie”. Just bear with me here. The entire time the movie was playing, I mistook the actor who played the murderous Raymond Smilie with the actor who played the put-upon butler of the horrible, entitled kids from “Jessie”. So, whenever this guy was on screen:
I saw this guy instead:
So, yeah, that one’s probably on me. The rest of you guys shouldn’t have that problem, unless I’ve somehow incepted you with the idea by writing it here. Either way, it didn’t stop me from enjoying the hell out of this film, so don’t let it slow you down, either. (Enjoying the hell out of it – see what I did there?)
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