Hard Candy 2005

Peter Debruge, Miami Herald: The acting is incredible. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: ... a film that gives you something to think about, raising questions that linger long after the theater lights have brightened. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Only two males working in perfectly mediocre pulp harmony would dream up an avenging teen angel like this one. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Hard Candy is supposed to be another cautionary tale about the dangerous risks of online chat-room dating, but ends up being just another psychological horror flick about pedophilia in which Little Red Riding Hood turns the tables on the wolf. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Hard Candy is an exploitation film, with very little happening but a guy getting tortured for about 75 minutes of screen time. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: It really takes us on this ride. Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: At the very first, Hard Candy plays hardball. It's hard to watch, hard to listen to, hard to think about. And then it falls apart. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: As Hard Candy moves further and further away from its opening scenes' gripping ambiguity, the frightening conviction Page brings to her role becomes the only thing keeping the film from lurching into sleazy, pulpy camp. Read more

Randy Cordova, Arizona Republic: ... a movie that will inspire discussions once it's over. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Hard Candy is the rare movie that may be worthiest for the arguments you'll have after it's over. Read more

Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times: Maddeningly exploitative, the film takes a provocative subject -- pedophilia -- and wraps it in a sterile, vacuum-sealed package, devoid of meaning. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Personally, I'd rather have this movie obliterated from my memory. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: ... a revolting piece of work. Read more

Michael Booth, Denver Post: Hard Candy is tantalizing, brutal, fetishistic, gripping and exhausting, with plenty of moments for movie patrons to shout advice at the screen. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Hard Candy is sweet poison indeed. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: To watch Hard Candy is, at moments, to be very afraid, but the scariest thing about it is the fury of Page's talent. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: The questions posed by Hard Candy may not be as profound as the filmmakers believe, but they are enough to keep us thinking for the length of a movie that deftly uses exploitation to explore exploitation. Read more

Matt Weitz, Dallas Morning News: Hard Candy is the kind of movie that fairly demands coffee and discussion afterward. Read more

Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly: Hayley and Jeff come across in almost equally repellent measure, their behaviors driven less by organic impulses than by their need to satisfy the script's elaborate series of reversals and counter-reversals. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: As gripping as Hard Candy is, one can't quite shake away the feeling that we're the ones being exploited by its mordant blend of kinky revenge fantasy and push-me-pull-you moral vision. Read more

Lisa Rose, Newark Star-Ledger: Hard Candy takes itself way too seriously. It's a genre movie that serves empty calories weighted with self-importance. Read more

Jami Bernard, New York Daily News: It's really a canny use of the medium to raise serious questions about point of view and empathy in the exploitation genre. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: It's cinematic S&M, a bondage-control game masquerading as a thriller. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: There's a lot more going on here than just a revenge fantasy. These are two fascinating characters, and watching them thrust and parry proves to be as impossible to turn away from as observing a grotesque roadside accident. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Seen as a film, seen as acting and direction, seen as just exactly how it unfolds on the screen, Hard Candy is impressive and effective. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Hard Candy is a psychological thriller as chilling as a cold, serrated blade to the jugular. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Hard Candy not only trips along a tightrope line between exploitation and art; in some ways, that line is its subject. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: It's well worth seeing, because it is well made -- apart from a few gaps in logic -- and well acted. Read more

Trevor Johnston, Time Out: Packaged in an increasingly lurid, credibility-free storyline, delivered with unstinting insensitivity by a first-time director determined to show off his ad-man's box of visual tics. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Hard Candy, a highly original psychological thriller/revenge fantasy, can be bitterly hard to take and uncomfortably intense, but it's well worth consuming. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: A spectacular performance by teenage thesp Ellen Page elevates this disturbing slice of designer shocksploitation into a film that's impossible to dismiss on principle. Read more

Rob Nelson, Village Voice: [The film] contrives to wag its own finger at itself -- to have its bonbon and eat it too. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: It's hard to find a warm spot in the heart for anyone here, or for those who created them. Read more