Hard Candy

The boyfriend and I watched Hard Candy last night.  He had found a Cracked article about how "if you like this movie, here is the better alternative."  This was supposed to be the better alternative to Juno.  We both felt really let down by this assessment.  It was the kind of movie that left you hollow at the end, with barely enough care to utter "meh".  Plain and simple, it was nothing more than "revenge porn".  But even then, it didn't have quite the right feel.  I told my boyfriend that it felt like a White Knight wrote this and was living vicariously through the teenage girl character.  In fact, as I was brushing my teeth last night I made him look up the writer and see if it was a dude.  It totally was.  White Knight wank - I nailed it.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

Problem #1
The victim does not matter.  Seriously.  She is only in there as an excuse for the revenge porn.  We know barely anything about her.  We see a photograph of her flashed once.  That's it.

I feel like the point of the movie is for the viewer to associate with Hayley, the protagonist, and feel like "Yay, we defeated the evil pedophile!"  But then again, maybe not... we don't even get to really enjoy this sensation much because we're never given hard proof of Jeff's wrongdoing until the very fucking end.  Which brings me to...

Problem #2
You don't actually know if Jeff deserves the torture... and even when you think you do, you really don't.

This was not a movie where I rooted for vigilante justice.  Honestly, I thought Jeff deserved to rot in jail (for most of the movie) rather than go through the inane plan Hayley has concocted to castrate him.  Vigilante justice like this needs motivation.  But we really aren't ever given Hayley's motivation.

At first, she plays dumb, pretending that she has no proof of Jeff's crimes.  As the viewer, you have no reason to doubt her ignorance, so it's almost horrifying to see her go through these lengths on a fucking hunch.  Oh sure, you know Jeff's a creep.  Meeting underage girls for coffee?  You know he has no business doing that.  But is Jeff in need of therapy and possibly some jail time, or has Jeff already committed a crime, thus making him irredeemable?  Not yet knowing what Hayley actually knows, we are given the impression that it doesn't matter to her.  That this isn't a matter of justice.  That is isn't even personal.  It's like she's just using Jeff as a stand in for pedophiles everywhere.  Or maybe, once this has all begun, she just can't deal with the possibility that she might be wrong.

All we really "know" at this point is that Hayley believes Jeff is irredeemable regardless of whether or not he's committed any crimes, and thus deserves preventative measures to be taken against him (ie, castration).

Problem #3
We really don't know anything.

We never learn exactly what Jeff is guilty of specifically.  We know he was involved in the murder of Donna, along with someone named Aaron, but we don't know what they actually did to her aside from kill her.  Both men pointed to each other as the killer and claimed to be just an accomplice.  It can be inferred, after this confession, that the photos Hayley found in the safe included pictures of Donna's death.  Until this point, all we knew was that Hayley had found "sick" pictures in there, but weren't given any conclusive evidence that they were pictures of anything illegal.  (It could have just been 2girls1cup for all we knew at the point of discovery.)

At this moment, you finally feel confident that Jeff is an appropriate candidate for vigilante justice, but you really don't care.  The confession comes too late.  At this point you're just ready for the torture to be over and can't wait for his character to be killed off so that this can all just come to an end.

We have no idea who Hayley is.  She makes sure to throw into doubt anything and everything we've learned about her throughout the entire movie.  We can't even be sure that her name is Hayley.  And while I don't mind this twist, what bothers me is that we're never actually given her motivation.  Who is Donna to her?!  Has this all been a plot to avenge Donna?  Or does the victim not matter?  Is Hayley just determined to kill the two scumbags because they got away with murder?

There's a brief monologue in the middle of the movie where Hayley justifies the castration by saying that pedophiles are irredeemable and that society's punishments for them aren't harsh enough and won't prevent further crimes from those people.  That's about the closest we get to an answer on her motivation, and it sounds far more like it's coming straight from the mouth of the writer than the character herself.

Problem #4
She's the male fantasy girl.

She's not just in therapy, she's craaazy and in therapy.  But it's OK because she's tough.  Note the short hair and wife beater!  Ooo, and a hoodie and chucks!  She's the indie/hipster version of Lisbeth Salander.

This one's a little harder for me to articulate.  Basically, I've noticed a theme to male writers trying to write tough, female characters.  When they're actively trying hard not to create a stereotypically sexualized female badass, they come up with something like this.  Which says something more about the male psyche than it does the actual variety among real life strong women.

Problem #5
Do you know teenagers?

I guess I just find it laughable that Jeff doesn't know who Goldfrapp is, but Hayley does and hates them.  Goldfrapp is one of those bands that aging hipster/indie snobs looooooove.  It's way more likely that Jeff is the one listening to Goldfrapp in his spare time and that Hayley would be the one who never heard of them, even when accounting for her precociousness.  (Seriously... I first heard of them thanks to a way older ex of mine.)  At least it was all a ruse and she ended up really hating the band.  But if it was all a ruse, then why pick the band in the first place?  Why not pick something that a majority of 14 year olds would listen to?  Or, if she's trying to play the outcast, why not pick something actually obscure and indie?  Meh.

Problem #6
No end and no beginning.

There was barely any exposition.  It went by in a flash and, as I stated above, we didn't really learn much else throughout the body of the work.  And then the end just goes "Bang! Hoodie Up. Cue Music."  And that's it.  We have a quick scene of Hayley walking down the road to loud music and then the credits roll on a black screen.  Personally, I think rolling the credits over a vision of her still walking would have done a lot to relieve the abruptness of the ending... but I'm not sure how you could salvage the beginning unless you interspersed it with flashes of Donna's murder and newspaper clippings.  Because truth be told, it was a visually interesting intro... it just lacked the kind of exposition that would have made this movie more coherent and enjoyable.  The practically 2 second exposition and denouement are seriously the thinnest bookends I can recall experiencing in a movie.  Hard Candy was all about the stuff in the middle, and it made it extremely hard for me to have any sort of emotional investment whatsoever.


It's funny, but I didn't actually hate the movie.  I didn't sit there going, "turn this shit off!  I can't take it anymore."  I just felt wholly indifferent and unsatisfied.


Edit - apparently Hayley only faked the castration.  It's one of those "blink and look down at instagram for 2 goddamn seconds and you'll miss it" type things.  Ugh.