By Keri O’Shea
I’d been wondering what had happened to director Sean Byrne since his brilliant debut feature The Loved Ones assured audiences that you could still weave an effective, horrific and ultimately heartwarming story out of elements which – on the surface – seem tried-and-tested. Incredibly, it’s been seven years since that film was made, so when I heard that Byrne had penned and directed a heavy-metal-infused occult horror, I was certainly interested. The resulting film – The Devil’s Candy – is a very different animal to its predecessor in many respects, although there is some overlap too, in so far as the newer film also shows a family unit pulled apart by a malign outsider influence.
The Hellman family (a very metal surname, excepting the fact that most of us probably associate it with mayonnaise) consists of artist father Jesse, mother Astrid and twelve year old Zooey, who has inherited her dad’s love of heavy music. Trying to make a living as a painter is hard going – so when the family finds a larger home in their native Texas which comes at an absolute steal, they decide to go for it; it has more space for dad to paint, a large roaming-size bedroom for their pre-teen daughter, oh, and a history of death. We as audience members already know of a tragedy which happened at the house; a middle-aged man, Ray, who had a history of psychiatric care, was tormented by supernatural voices which seem to emanate from the very walls of the house, and apparently tried to find solace via loudly playing chords on an electric guitar. Naturally, this form of self-help didn’t go down well with his elderly parents – whose attempts to remonstrate with him ended badly. Still, the real estate guy is honest about this episode, and the new family decide that it doesn’t matter, in the grand scheme of things. A bargain is a bargain.
So far, so good and the family move in; only thing is, it’s not long before the strange voices and visions which plagued the last incumbent start to bother Jesse, too. Perhaps a lifetime’s experience of a musical genre associated with the devil has given him some coping strategies – he doesn’t seem to go off the rails to the same extent as Ray, but the influence of the house soon begins to creep in to his art, until the benign butterfly-themed canvas he had been commissioned to finish starts to look like something by Joe Coleman. Oh, and more worryingly, there seem to be links between what he’s painting, and What Ray Does Next: the previous inhabitant isn’t in jail, after all, and is continuing to act as the voices command him, soon linking the tormented children emerging on the canvas with real-life acts of violence. But whose voice is behind these acts?
I think the first thing which this film does well is also one of its most understated components, and it’s something both Ben and I commented on after the screening – what with him about to move house, and me having bought a house and moved this year. The Devil’s Candy is a pointed reminder of just how vulnerable we can actually be when moving into a house which is ostensibly now ‘ours’. The film shows that Ray still considers the Hellman house to be his home; he turns up, demands entry, and interacts with the new family. More than that, he still has a key and lets himself in – turning up in Zooey’s bedroom one night for a scene which is decidedly creepy. When it comes to it, how many of us change the locks when we move house? I’ve moved eleven times and I’ve never done it, even though now I come to think of it, I did actually once wake up to find one of my crook landlord’s workmen in my bedroom (oh hey, thanks for unearthing that one, Mr. Byrne). It’s a simple enough plot device in the film, but it works very well and actually, a lot of the ensuing horror hinges upon this one element.
Byrne and his actors have also given us a family unit which we can care about, too: without sentimentality, or masses of explanatory dialogue, we can believe in and like this unorthodox bunch of characters. I spent a large part of the time thinking Jesse was being acted by Matthew McConaughey (there IS a likeness there with Rust Cohle) so my apologies to Ethan Embry, who has had a long and varied career to date, but hasn’t done a great deal in the way of horror movies before this. He carries the film skilfully, balancing the tormented artist shtick well against his performance as a dedicated, loving father. Mother Shiri Appleby is equally put through her paces by some of the film’s more gruelling moments, whilst Zooey (Kiara Glasco, who has already notched up a performance in a Cronenberg film) is believably sharp and vulnerable by turns. Then there’s Ray himself (Pruitt Taylor Vince), a bold piece of casting because, to external appearances, he looks a little vulnerable, too. This film would have been a very different experience had Byrne cast some angular, wild-eyed individual to play a straightforward villain, and a less confident director probably would have done this. As it stands, Taylor Vince can be ambiguous, an important capacity in slowly building the sense of supernatural threat – which itself throws a possible curveball at the end…
I only have one minor quibble with what is otherwise an interesting and well-made film – and that refers to something which several filmmakers seem to have found impossible to resist when delving into the world of heavy metal as a source of storyline. The Devil’s Candy has a couple of moments, but one in particular where it can’t resist playing an element for laughs; it’s a pretty hefty tonal shift at a key moment, and one which doesn’t rest too comfortably with what’s come before it. Interestingly, the moment itself is emblazoned on the poster art for the film; I’d have tried to avoid the whole rawk cliche, personally, as it’s not needed to take the film anywhere: The Devil’s Candy is a very different type of film to splatter parodies such as Deathgasm – and so it should be allowed to be.
Overall, however, this is a well-crafted horror film, another example of Sean Byrne taking some familiar components of the genre and recombining them into a decent, pacy and often innovative story. Whilst it doesn’t have the pure visceral glee of The Loved Ones, it’s proof positive that Byrne is willing to explore the genre in a series of different ways, and I sincerely hope that he doesn’t take another seven years to show us what else he can do.