Hard Candy isn’t for the faint of heart. It isn’t a gory or graphic film by any means, but the subject matter is pretty heavy. I’m not sure how I initially stumbled upon it. It may have been during my indie, looking-for-something-with-shock-value phase. I’ll preface by saying I’m unsure how to refer to character pronouns, as the character of Hayley, a 14-year-old girl, was played by Elliot Page, who has come out as a trans man), so I will be using the pronouns of the characters, for the sake of telling the story.
(I had an ENTIRE blog written, and I thought the draft was saved, but I guess not. I was going to hit Publish, and it erased everything beyond this first paragraph, so… fun.)
I like to have some degree of separation when I select my next script to read. In this case, I’d watched Juno, which stars Eliot Page, and Hard Candy also starts Eliot Page, so it made sense. Plus, I hadn’t watched the film in a while and I hadn’t read the script. Plus plus, both films deal with an adult man having an inappropriate relationship with a teenage girl, though Hard Candy is worse.
If you haven’t watched the film, I recommend doing so before continuing to read, as I’ll be going into spoilers…That being said, let’s begin.
Hard Candy starts with the visuals of a chatroom. Those of you from the AIM days, such as myself, know what I’m talking about. Two people are having a flirty chat and decide to meet. Fast forward to our introduction to 14-year-old Hayley. She turns to face the camera and has a bit of chocolate on her lip, exuding childhood innocence. Enter Jeff (or Geoff), the film uses one and the film uses the other, so I’ll just use Jeff. Jeff is 32 years old, so already red flags. She asks him if he wants some of whatever she ordered. He takes his finger. His ADULT finger, wipes the chocolate from her CHILD lips, and puts it in his mouth. In the script, the person behind the counter is disgusted by the interaction between the two, but in the film, you don’t see much of their reaction.
They chat and flirt and eventually make the decision to go back to his place. He makes them drinks, which may or may not have had something in them. It doesn’t matter anyway, because Hayley says she is always told never to drink something she didn’t see being made, so she goes and makes them drinks. Her drinks have alcohol. At some point, she wants Jeff to photograph her. She is dancing around, she is taking her clothes off, and music is blaring. Jeff wants her to sit down, but she won’t, and he yells at her, but then things get fuzzy for him and he collapses.
He wakes up tied to a chair. At first, he thinks it’s a sexy game, but he quickly realizes Hayley is no longer being sexy or flirty with him. Back at the coffee shop where they met, there is a flyer for a missing girl named Donna, and Hayley wants to know what happened to Donna. A lot of the film is them talking, which sounds less interesting than it is. There is a LOT of tension. There are times when Jeff breaks free of his restraints and tries to attack Hayley, only to get tied up again.
Jeff insists he doesn’t know who Donna is, but a photo in his safe proves he does. Funny enough, he meets her at the same coffee shop he meets Hayley. His story then changes to he met her, but they parted ways after the coffee shop. Hayley also finds… let’s say inappropriate photos of minors in his safe.
The film progresses, and at one point he is tied up and Hayley is going to castrate him. He escapes again, and learns she didn’t, despite saying she did. He tries to attack her again, and she tases him. He passes out and wakes up in a noose. She wants him to hang himself, and in exchange, she’ll get rid of the proof of his pedophilia. He refuses and tries to attack her again. She escapes, and he escapes the noose.
He finds her on the roof, and she has the noose again (they’d been running around the house for a bit). She gives him the offer again. He pleads with her, saying he didn’t do anything, but he watched, and he wanted to photograph it, but the other guy wouldn’t let him. He tells her he can give her the name of the guy and help her find him. Hayley tells Jeff she already knows Who the guy is, and he said Jeff was the one that assaulted and killed Donna before he killed HIMSELF. Sidenote, there is this woman from his past, Janelle. They haven’t been in touch since they were teens, and Hayley has called her and she’s on her way. They can both see and hear Janelle knocking at the door, asking where Jeff is. Jeff doesn’t want Janelle to know about his… actions, so he hangs himself, thinking Hayley will get rid of the evidence. Well… she lied. And the film ends with her escaping.
As I said, it’s a heavy film, and it leaves you with some questions. The first one being, is Jeff guilty? I say he is, and I’d wager to say he is Donna’s killer. There are at least three times that he escapes Hayley, and rather than escape or call for help, he attempts to hurt Hayley. When he gets on the roof, he has a knife, and he asks Hayley, “which do you want to fuck first, me or the knife?” I find him saying he wasn’t involved as means of manipulation.
Another question is, did Hayley even know Donna? It’s left a little ambiguous, at least more so than the script. Based on the script, I would say she didn’t know Donna, as the end of the script has her in another chatroom luring another older man in. I suppose it doesn’t matter to the story whether she actually knew Donna or not. Though if she didn’t, I’m curious how she was able to find enough information to determine Jeff and the other guy, I think his name was Aaron, were involved. My guess is she was assaulted when she was younger and this is her way of seeking vengeance.
It’s a great film. Even though I already knew how it would end from watching it years ago, the tension still got to me. I also thought Elliot Page and Patrick Wilson did an INCREDIBLE job. It’ll sound terrible to say, but I thought Jeff was so cute… at first, even despite meeting with a 14-year-old. And I think that was intentional. There are times when Patrick is meant to lure you in with his charms, much like he lures in underage girls.
After all that, I could really only go to another Elliot Page film, or a Patrick Wilson film. Sandra Oh is in the film for a moment, but I went with a Patrick Wilson film… Watchmen.
One last thing, I really loved that the script I found online had edits and revisions. A lot of the time, the scripts I find are the final draft. There is something refreshing and comforting seeing the edits someone made to their work. It lets me know that my first draft will never be perfect.
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