"Knight Thoughts" -- exclusive web content
Little red riding hood as avenging angel, a nymphet priestess of torture presides over the
most nauseating film experience one could imagine
SPOILERS GALORE (YOU CAN THANK ME LATER):

In Hard Candy, a young lass named Hayley (not Mills) does the internet chat thing with Jeff (Patrick Wilson), a photographer who
should know better. He proceeds to meet the young, underage girl at a coffee bar and then does the unthinkable: he brings her to
his house.  Jeff seems like a nice enough guy, just a not too bright one but once he begins to ply Hayley (with the most annoying
speaking voice since Jean Hagen in
Singin' in the Rain) with alcohol any sympathy or fear you have for him goes out the window.  
There's no excuse for what he does.  But then Hayley fixes Jeff a little drink and before you can say
Death and the Maiden, he
awakens to find himself tied up and about to become Hayley’s favorite pin cushion.

The rest of the film, mostly shot in tight close-ups, follows Hayley, apparently an avenging angel for pre-pubescent girls victimized
by pedophiles, as she methodically tortures Jeff.  She drops the baby girl whine and replaces it with an adult girl whine (still horribly
annoying) as she goes about her business.  Jeff pleads and begs and screams and when Hayley finds some naughty pictures locked
up in Jeff’s safe, he even promises to turn himself in.  Nothing doing.  This kid, child-woman or whatever she is has only two things
on her mind: castration and convincing Jeff to commit suicide by jumping off the roof of his house.  She achieves both her goals
(and proudly tosses around Jeff’s testicles post-castration after neatly placing them in a baggie) and then merrily goes on her way.  
Long before that my sympathies had switched to the pedophile and my wrath turned on the writer, director and everyone else who
thought this gleeful exercise in sadism was a "morality play."  Baloney.

This supposed “cautionary” tale left me for the first time in 40 years of movie viewing almost physically ill.  The audience that I saw
the picture with alternately cheered on the know it all kid or laughed at her snide superiority over her victim.  The entire film seemed
an excuse for everyone to luxuriate in the pleasures of victimization and torture.  Apparently, I was the only one that just didn’t buy
the “eye for an eye” theme of the movie (pedophiles get what they deserve ya know).  I’m certainly not trying to justify Jeff’s
pedophile habits but the queasiness I felt at Hayley’s (read: the writer-director-audience) clinical act of revenge, in my mind, went
beyond the pale.  The character as written and played was clearly psychotic – probably just what the army had in mind when they
looked for candidates to torture Iraqi prisoners.  

The nasty, mean spirited movie – and the audience’s enthusiastic receiving of it – made me feel terribly out of step with the times.  
Why, in this age of aggressive stupidity does that not surprise?  Better to be out of step if this is the alternative, me thinks.
The WORST movie of 2006 is here:
Hard Candy
4-28-06 "Knight Thoughts" web exclusive
By Richard Knight, Jr.