Directed By: Sean Byrne
Starring: Ethan Embry, Shiri Appleby, Pruitt Taylor Vince
Tag line: "He Will Slither into your Soul"
Trivia: Came in 3rd place for Best Feature at the 2016 Sheffield Horror Film Festival
I first saw director Sean Byrne’s The Devil’s Candy earlier this year, and was beyond impressed. It was a deeply troubling horror film that delved into some dark areas, all the while centering on a very likable young family. I knew then that the movie was special, and when I finally picked up the Blu-Ray a few months later I couldn’t wait to sit down and watch it again.
But something quite unexpected happened during that subsequent viewing. Even though I knew exactly what was coming, The Devil’s Candy still managed to disturb me more the second time than it did initially. In fact, there was a moment when I had to stop the movie and collect my thoughts, which I didn’t even consider doing the first time I watched it.
It was a unique experience for me; I’ve been frightened by films before, but I can’t remember another one that scared me more the second time around, and the fact that The Devil’s Candy did so is a tribute to both its director and his excellent cast.
Despite their money troubles, the Hellman family: struggling artist Jesse (Ethan Embry); his wife Astrid (Shari Appleby); and their teenage daughter Zooey (Kiara Glasco), just moved into their dream house, a beautiful Texas residence that’s well off the beaten path. There’s even an old barn out back, which Jesse transforms into an art studio. And while Zooey is somewhat apprehensive about attending a brand new school, the Hellmans are confident they’ll be happy in their home for many years to come.
But the house has a dark history; Ray Smilie (Pruitt Taylor Vince), a mentally backward man whose family once owned the dwelling, used to say he heard voices coming from behind his bedroom wall, and one night those voices told him to murder his parents. Because their deaths were ruled an accident, Ray Smilie is still a free man, and catches the Hellmans off-guard when he shows up on their front porch one evening, asking is he can move back into his old room. Though he feels sorry for Ray, Jesse refuses to let him inside.
And it’s a good thing, too, because the voices continue to haunt Ray Smilie, telling him to do terrible things to children, and convincing him that he should now set his sights on young Zooey!
As for Jesse, he, too, has started hearing the voices, which speak to him through his artwork. In a trance one afternoon, Jesse even paints a picture that suggests Zooey is in great danger.
Can Jesse protect his daughter from Ray Smilie, or has Zooey’s fate already been determined by a force greater than all of them?
So why did The Devil’s Candy upset me more the second time than the first? The answer is simple: I cared about the Hellman clan, so much so that I didn’t want to see them go through what I knew was coming. From the beginning, it’s obvious the Hellmans are a tight-knit family, and that Jesse and Zooey in particular share a special bond with one another. Ethan Embry was the perfect choice to play Jesse, the well-meaning father who passed his passion for heavy metal music on to his daughter, and Kiara Glasco is equally good as Zooey, who, thanks to her upbringing, is a thoughtful, intelligent young woman. Shari Appleby is also convincing as Astrid, who, though she doesn’t share the same interests as Jesse and Zooey, is a loving mother, but it’s the relationship between father and daughter that pulls us in and makes us fear the evil we know is coming for them.
Yet despite the horrific things he does throughout the movie (including one very traumatic sequence involving the abduction of a young boy), we realize early on that Pruitt Taylor Vince’s Ray Smilie is as much a victim as any other character in this film. We meet Ray in the first scene, a flashback to the night he murdered his parents. To drown out the voices that are filling his head with terrible thoughts, Ray stands in his darkened bedroom, playing his Flying V electric guitar as loudly as he can. Ray wants the voices to go away, and has no desire to carry out their orders (he even says as much to his potential victims), but his simplistic nature has made it impossible for him to fight the demon controlling his mind. Vince has always been an underrated actor, and in The Devil’s Candy he manages to make us feel sorry for a character that more than once transforms into a monster before our very eyes.
With The Devil’s Candy, writer / director Sean Byrne has crafter a singular motion picture, and thanks to his steady hand and the excellent performances turned in by his cast the movie loses none of its effectiveness from one viewing to the next. There are instances when familiarity does, indeed, breed contempt, but in the case of The Devil’s Candy it only manages to stir up dread.