Hard Candy

Hard Candy (2005)

Hard Candy is the thrilling story about a teenage girl, who tries to expose a 32 year old man as a paedophile in a cat and mouse game, in which the roles of victim and culprit are constantly reversed.





The film starts with a chat-dialogue between 14 year old Hayley Stark and the 32 year old photographer Jeff Kohlver. They are acting really flirty and decide to meet for the first time in a coffee shop. Jeff is really surprised and impressed by Hayley, which seems much more mature than other girls her age. She convinces him to take her to his house. Once arrived she is very impressed by Jeffs' luxury flat and starts to mix some Cocktails they drink, while talking about Jeffs job as photographer and a girl called Janelle which appears to be his first love. They keep flirting with each other and she teases him untill he finally starts to take some pictures of her. While doing that he suddenly collapses unconscious. 

When Jeff wakes up again he finds himself tied up to a chair, unable to move. It turns out that Hayley has drugged him with the drinks she mixed. Hayley soon shows her true face and accuses Jeff of paedophilia. He turns down all of these reproaches but she insists to be right and starts to look through his whole flat to find evidence. Finally she finds a hidden safe and manages to open it. We never learn of what is in this safe but it seems to be really shocking and enough evidence to prove that Jeff is indeed a paedophile. The only thing we get to see, is that the safe contains a photo of a missing girl. From now on Hayley tortures Jeff, among other things she makes him believe that she has castrated him. He manages to escape several times but underestimates the girl that overpowers him every time. Further, there are revealed more details about Jeffs childhood and that he was involved in the murder of the girl whose photo Hayley found in the safe. One time Jeff is able to call the police but decides to take revenge on Hayley in an act of selfjustice. But again she manages to overpower him. In the end the situation escalates and Hayley convinces Jeff to commit suicide, telling him it was the only solution and that she will destroy all the evidence in his flat so nobody (especially not Janelle) will find out about the terrible things he has done. He hangs himself and in the last scene, refering to the promise she gave Jeff, she says more to herself: "Or not."

I have read a lot of reviews about this movie and in almost everyone it says, that it is left unclear till the end, if Jeff is a paedophile or not. I think it has been made very clear that he is. You can see that in many scenes, for example the one, Hayley manages to open the safe and says it was really sick what he has got in there. He starts to cry and seems to struggle with his guilty conscience. Besides, why would he commit suicide if he was innocent. 

I liked a lot of things about this movie, for example the scene in which Hayley says: 
"Just because a girl knows how to immitate a women, does not mean, she is ready to do what a women does. If a kid is experimenting and says something flirtatious, you ignore it, you don't encourage it." 
It is exactly this thing most people don't understand. And it is very important to understand these kind of things. 

Besides I was really impressed by the perfomance of Ellen Page. You can really see how at first her facial features are very childlike, shy and insecure. And then, suddenly she turns into this psychopatic little girl with nothing childlike in her face anymore. 

It is not easy to make a Thriller which keeps the tension over the whole movie in just one location and with just two actors. There are a lot of colors that help to get into the atmosphere of the movie. The very aggressive red that represents anger but passion as well and the really cold blue that makes everything a bit threatening.


I also liked the idea of the little, innocent girl that keeps overpowering this grown up man. It is all about selfjustice and that she is able to expose him as a paedophile while the police isn't even suspecting him of something. The roles just swich in this movie, he is a very self-confident, rich guy that gets completely destroyed by a teenage girl which on the other side turns into the person controlling the whole situation. 


I would recommend this movie to anyone although it may be shocking for some people. In my oppinion it is very important to deal with things such as paedophilia.