Go see Hard Candy tomorrow!

[img1]Hard Candy is the sort of thriller that makes you cringe and wish you were not sitting in the theater watching it, yet captivates you and makes you watch it all the same. The terror in this movie is not blunt gore and horror as in some films; it is a deeply rooted psychological terror that is borne of our social infrastructure and which grows into a frightful reality in the movie.

Haley (Ellen Page) meets Jeff (Patrick Wilson) in a cafe after they meet on the Internet. She is extremely smart and more mature than her age. He is a cultured photographer enamored with her personality. She is 14. He is 32. As the story progresses, Haley and Patrick wind up back at his house, she makes them drinks -- because you shouldn't take a drink you haven't mixed yourself -- and he takes some photos of her.

Then Jeff passes out all of the sudden and wakes up to find himself tied to a chair with Haley interrogating him about his intentions and his past. She accuses him of being a child molester and even alludes to the murder of a young girl she knew who went missing.

The tables turn back and forth throughout the film as Jeff struggles free at one point and Haley painfully wrestles him back to the ground. A good portion of the film involves Haley sadistically threatening Jeff with castration if he does not give up his secrets. In between interrogating Jeff and fighting him, Haley shows her skills as a detective and computer whiz, searching his computer files and every square inch of the house for any elusive evidence of his pedophilia.

Nothing in Hard Candy is one simple and one sided. The characters are both extremely complex, and while watching this film there were times at which I wondered who the real victim and who the real villain was.

The very opening shots of the film -- a saucy slice of an instant-message conversation followed by a close-up of Haley biting into a creamy chocolate desert -- and the way in which it is shot make it difficult to stomach from the beginning. Director David Slade and writer Brian Nelson use anticipation and hints at gore to tighten their grip on their audience in a way which no gruesome film ever could.

Yet this is a very well made, very powerful film. Everything is put together in Hard Candy; it's just difficult to swallow.

The intensity of Ellen Page's performance is stunningly gripping and is one of the reasons that the film works so well. At the same time, Patrick Wilson is frighteningly approachable in a passionate performance as Jeff. Their performances are even more admirable as the film is primarily these two characters squaring off against each other. Sandra Oh even makes a brief appearance as a concerned neighbor late in the film.

Hard Candy is difficult to watch, it is absolutely terrifying and it focuses on a controversial subject that is all too familiar in today's society, yet every frame, every line from this script, demands to be seen.

When you sit down in the theatre, prepare to be profoundly scared in a way that few movies can manage. Hard Candy will chill you.

This review was originally published on [url='http://www.thescreentest.org']www.thescreentest.org[/url], a Web site by UW cinema studies students.