Hard boiled disorder; a sick aftertaste of unsettling and chaotic nature. Color palette plates that resemble badges of pretense, or simply solid hues; clean, cut, and elegant. In all of its entirety, David Slade’s Hard Candy is a purposely uncomfortably numb experience. Tight close-ups seem to generate an exquisite sensation of claustrophobic anxiety. The response is disturbing and thought-provoking, of course, and Slade manages to direct it all with few hiccups.
Ellen Page brings a fierce and electrifying sort of reckoning; her character is donned with a malicious and psychotically charged performance, thrilling to see unfold, and Patrick Wilson at the hands of her intervention is subject to the psychological struggle she empties out. I was honestly surprised by how well he can act. This guy’s a magnet to raw emotion. Hard Candy belongs to the two’s exceptional, unhinging, and invigorating spectacle of a show.
