Hard Candy- No Rating

The movie opens with a chat window- A 32 year-old man with "Photographer" in his screenname (Patrick Wilson from the brilliant "Little Children" and "Angels in America" miniseries) talks with a 14 year-old girl named "ThongGirl" (a 17 year-old Ellen Page from "Juno"). The scene is short, but it leads to their date at a coffee house where he buys her everything she wants. They soon decide to head back to his place where a bizarre turn of events causes them to be at odds, battling the other for dominance.

"Hard Candy" is a fascinating movie that occasionally doesn't seem to know what it's trying to say. Pedophilia is bad, perhaps? That can't be it since it seems that most people believe it, and pedophiles don't tend to share that aspect of their lives with others. It seems to harbor a belief that even if an adult sexually desires a minor that they have to act within the capacity that they are placing the child in a vulnerable position where if they act as a lover, then they aren't helping the kid, and if they act as a parent, the love is gone. This is territory I try not to jump into. The movie has a muddled message, but it probably speaks to some people better than others.

All that being said, the movie is a horror/thriller. There are no supernatural elements, and the violence mostly happens offscreen, but when push comes to shove, I would say that it is closer to the thriller field than horror. Not to say that it isn't scary- this is the best developed "strangers from the internet meeting" movie I've ever seen (although not that many come to mind).

So, there is no nudity or sex except what is discussed in the dialogue, and most violence happens off-screen although there isn't much of it- what keeps this movie going? Reader, that would be the dialogue. This revenge fantasy doesn't jump into "Saw" territory by trying to show you the most graphic ways someone can torture themselves with a big, silly machine, but instead, the most thrilling moments come from what is left unsaid and the amount of time it takes for characters to realize what is going to happen to them.

I don't have much else to say except that I was on the fence about recommending this movie for a while. I finally decided that I would just say that if what I have written seems to be your kind of movie, go ahead and check it out. However, like "The Truman Show," it seems that the movie's most shocking twist has been revealed to just about everyone. If you're among those that do not know the twist and want to check this out, count yourself lucky and go for it.

I should probably answer the question about why I didn't give the movie a rating. See, this is clearly a movie that you're either in the audience for or not, and although its content isn't disturbing, the general atmosphere and the way certain scenes were shaped does make it so. This is not a pleasant movie, and it doesn't pretend to be. I'll say no more.

Rated R for disturbing violent and aberrant sexual content involving a teen, and for language.

Buy it here.