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‘Bad Candy’ review: Dirs. Scott B. Hansen & Desiree Connell [FrightFest]

This one will arrive on digital and DVD in October.

Each year there is always at least one anthology film that makes it onto the Arrow Video FrightFest schedule. This year is no exception with a few of them screening over the five-day event. Frustratingly though, two of the selection – Isolation and Bad Candy – have been pitted against each other in the line-up, meaning that if you’re a fan of the format, you’ve had to go with one over the other, but was Bad Candy the correct decision?

The port-manteau style story of Bad Candy follows the residents of a small town on Halloween night as they encounter a series of horrific events. If Bad Candy sounds a bit like Michael Dougherty’s Trick R Treat that is because it is exactly the movie that Bad Candy is trying to replicate. It even has its own monster lurking around after the ill-fated. Rather than be a pumpkin headed sackboy, here we have a very pedestrian evil clown. It’s so generic that any chances of it being frightening are so slim that Krusty the Klown is almost more menacing. 

Unfortunately for directors Scott B. Hansen and Desiree Connell, the aspirations of the project are unfulfilled as Bad Candy is little more than an erratic and inchovesive jumble of set pieces. As the stories begin to flow, the film stumbles from one character to another with little explanation or fanfare. One sequence includes a character screaming “what the fuck is going on here?!” and the audience can really relate to the bewilderment. The bulk of the stories are not properly developed, jumping straight into a strange occurrence with no time to set up anything meaningful – characters, locations, relationships – to generate any tension. With each piece stumbling into one another it becomes hard to keep a track of anything. 

Trying to steer the ship straight are the pairing of Slipknot and Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor and Gremlins legend Zach Galligan. The two play the radio hosts of late night spooky talk show, Chilly Billy. Their portion of the film pops up every now and again, offering a slight reprieve from the brain melting muddle of whatever else is happening. It is so unlike everything else on display that it almost feels as if the pair were added in at a later date.

The two fleeting glimmers of redemption are the design and architecture of our clown’s lair, and the modern day reworking of Frankenstein, Dracula, Mummy and Wolfman, even if the latter is more than a little derivative of a Simpsons Halloween opening skit. Muddled and messy, Bad Candy offers barely a morsel of the fun that a Halloween-set anthology should do. The creative team have tried their hardest to replicate the enjoyable madness of a film like Trick R Treat, but sadly do not achieve their goals. 

Bad Candy

Kat Hughes

Bad Candy

Summary

An entirely bewildering narrative structure, especially at early doors, means that any potential for Bad Candy to be entertaining is quickly lost.

2

Bad Candy was reviewed at Arrow Video FrightFest. Bad Candy will arrive on DVD and Digital on the 4th October from Kaleidoscope Entertainment

Kat Hughes is a UK born film critic and interviewer who has a passion for horror films. An editor for THN, Kat is also a Rotten Tomatoes Approved Critic. She has bylines with Ghouls Magazine, Arrow Video, Film Stories, Certified Forgotten and FILMHOUNDS and has had essays published in home entertainment releases by Vinegar Syndrome and Second Sight. When not writing about horror, Kat hosts micro podcast Movies with Mummy along with her five-year-old daughter.

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