An action-packed slog

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

A 14yo girl with the skills of Jason Bourne, the tactics of James Bond and the physical strength of Ben Grimm lures a guy into a trap and tortures him under the suspicion he "might" have done something wrong. But according to the story it is kind of fair and right, for some reason. She beats him up quite a few times, actually she kicks his ass around hands down, outsmarts him, outtalks him, outeverythings him. If this was a story about a 14yo boy torturing a woman to have her confess crimes he can't prove, the feminist party would have burned theaters. Apparently, the other way round is perfectly legit, a man is guilty until proven innocent and torturing a suspect is perfectly fine. Good concept, Guantanamo. And a 14yo brat can talk him into killing himself. Yep, she can talk. That's all she does for 95% of this silly film actually. Past 30 minutes in the movie you start hoping he'd kill the damn chatterbox, regardless he's guilty or not. It could have been e decent horror short with an adolescent psycho, but no. Somebody wanted a revenge movie justifying torturing suspects. That claim killed it together with the 14yo Xmen-like brat. Apart from the first 10 intriguing minutes the film sucks throughout without redemption. Steer clear.

This film had everything set up to make for a glorious mind-screwing psychological movie that tests boundaries and covers highly controversial topics. A teenage girl intentionally seeks out a guy she thinks may be a pedophile? That's not something you tend to see in movies and such a concept alone inspires hordes of people to grab their pitchforks in a knee-jerk moralistic gut reaction. You couldn't have asked for a better platform on which to build a deep psychological movie.It's so unfortunate that such a great premise slowly rotted away into what can only be described as "vigilante justice porn." Yes, it's full of shocking high-tension moments, but they aren't because of the interesting story or the uncomfortable questions running through your mind. It's uncomfortable for the same reason that The Passion of the Christ was uncomfortable: you get to spend an entire movie wondering how much farther the brutality of it all can go.On a technical note, this movie makes far too much use of very high shutter speeds on the cameras resulting in a complete lack of motion blur during tense action moments; the intent is to make you uncomfortable through unnatural-looking movement but the actual result is just plain annoying.I was disappointed when I realized that the movie was not going anywhere with the initial premise and had no intentions of being interesting, cerebral, novel, or anything other than mindless vitriol. I can't understand people who gave it high ratings; did we watch the same movie? The only thing this succeeds at is getting you past the setup at the start; everything else looks like a typical big-budget movie but has almost zero plot. The real point of this movie seems to be to mess with you and make you uncomfortable, neither of which are okay if there's no payoff afterwards. It is not smart, it is not deep, and it is not interesting. If the experience of watching this film was like going to a restaurant, you'd get a nice appetizer and then only baskets of bread for the rest of the night, never receiving the main course or dessert.

When I first watched this film, I had no expectations so I was caught totally by surprise on how suspenseful and dark "Hard Candy" was.Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson were perfect picks for what is basically a two person psycho-drama. Page comes across, at first, as a pretty and naive youngster and Wilson portrays his usual pleasant male lead but the dark undertones kick in quite early. The fact that a teen and an adult agree to meet over the Internet is your first clue that something's amiss. Supposedly, his aim is to only take pictures, being a professional photographer.Wilson's character has made a grave mistake: behind Pages freckles and pretty smile lies a stone-cold stalker.After tricking him into allowing her to make some alcoholic drinks (and drugging him), Page then ties him up and announces her plans: she's going to get him to admit to being a sexual predator and castrate him.The tension escalates from there. The photographer nearly escapes twice but the girl seemingly has come prepared for almost anything.The main reason for Page's character's actions is she believes her captive is the killer responsible for a missing friend of hers.The best thing about the movie is the back and forth dialogue between the two characters (a good script here!).the one thing I've noticed on other sites with reviews is that a lot of people see the teen as insane and that's she got the wrong guy. I believe this is because Patrick Wilson almost always comes across as a hero/nice guy in his films. Plus, they may have not watched the film to its completion which leaves no ambiguity.One of my most favoured films of its type. Do watch it!

I watched this movie several years ago and was very disturbed by the fact that so many people had complemented it. Basically this girl tortures a man to death on the SUSPICION of sexual abuse. She does this without any proof, no evidence, no names, no nothing. The man tries to reason with this psychopath to no avail. He doesn't do anything to harm her prior and appears to be a true blue photographer. I don't know why people liked this movie but no, it's not "worth a watch" as the first review says. It's smut.