Butterflies? SO not metal!
Main Cast: Ethan Embry, Pruitt Taylor Vince
Director: Sean Byrne
In looking for something short to watch one night, we landed on THE DEVIL’S CANDY on Shudder. This is an entirely forgettable movie, and I can prove it. I’ve seen it before. And I didn’t remember a single detail about it. It must have been years ago—it came out in 2015, so I maybe saw it in 2018-2019, I’d guess—and I vaguely recall Ethan Embry as the dad, but other than that, it was like I was seeing it for the first time.
So what was my second first impression?
It was alright.
I mean it’s not an original premise at all; family moves into a new house they bought cheap because of its past and those past events still haunt the house and start to influence the new family. Ethan Embry plays Jesse, a painter and father who tries to be there for his family, but is honestly more interested in painting. I can’t fault his character there, it’s a flaw in artists; we sometimes get distracted by the art and it draws our attention from the things that are more important. In this case, there’s a whispering in Jesse’s ear which he thinks is his muse, but is probably something darker and way more sinister.
Meanwhile, that past I mentioned comes back to the family in the form of Ray, son of the house’s former—now dead—occupants. Ray’s also got a voice in his head but it’s not filling him with terrible images to paint of his daughter on fire, it’s telling Ray to kill. Ray tries to block out this voice by playing his guitar as loud as he can and this is one of the moments in the movie that stopped me.
The movie opens with Ray’s mother coming to tell him to stop playing so loud and Ray says he has to play loud because it drowns out the voices. She says she’s going to have him sent back to the hospital and Ray says nah and pushes mom down the stairs.
Once Jesse and his family, mother Astrid (Shiri Appleby) and daughter Zooey (Kiara Glasco), move in, Ray comes back one night saying he needs to come home because they—the owners of the motel he’s been staying at—won’t let him play loud. Jesse tells him he doesn’t live there anymore and needs to leave. While daughter Zooey is frustrated with him, saying, “You always say to treat people like you want to be treated,” I say Zooey’s 12 and has no idea what she’s talking about and Jesse was totally right in that situation.
Meanwhile, the voice in Ray’s ear is also in Jesse’s and the things he’s been painting are not only a vast departure from his previous work, but they’re also finally getting him recognized by a local gallery owner. And circling back to that distraction from the important things I mentioned earlier, the work and the voice in his ear get so intense they cause him to leave Zooey at school until the sun goes down. Jesse isn’t so far gone, though, that he brushes it off. He really does want to be a good dad and from earlier interactions it’s clear Jesse and Zooey are closer than Astrid and Zooey.
But it’s not just Jesse who wants to be close to Zooey; the voice in Ray’s ear has also taken notice.
THE DEVIL’S CANDY is a grimy movie. Even fresh from the shower, Jesse looks dirty through the entire movie, so much so I made my wife promise if I ever look like that, she’ll tell me. Ray, too, is a filthy man. Played by character actor Pruitt Taylor Vince, every movement seems to take it out of him, and he constantly seems on the verge of a heart attack. Set in Texas, that Texas sun beats down on the movie and coats everything in a layer of sweat.
And then there’s the soundtrack. During the drive to their new home, Jesse and Zooey are rocking out to some death metal and Astrid asks if they can listen to something softer. “Metallica?” Zooey suggests. If you like your music loud, hard, and fast, you might just dig this movie.
But is THE DEVIL’S CANDY worth it?
Like I said, I know I’ve seen it before, but not one single detail stuck with me, except maybe the Ethan Embry as a painter detail. I couldn’t have told you his name, his predicament, or what he paints. I couldn’t have told you what the devil’s candy is (it’s children, and Ray has to feed them to Satan). I couldn’t have told you where the movie was set, when it was set, or even why it was set. It was such a non-entity for me in the, at least, six or seven years since I’ve seen it that I’ve had it on my Shudder list probably since 2023 and I never realized I’d seen it before.
But it is short—79 minutes—and the third act is pretty intense. Writer/director Sean Byrne keeps the movie visually interesting even if the complexity of the plot falls short. The acting is pretty good all around even if Appleby is the fifth most important character in a movie with three more important characters, and Embry’s wig will distract you every single time he’s on screen, which is a lot in this movie. But in the end, it’s a harmless horror movie that tries its best and just wants to be entertaining. Do I feel like we wasted a movie night? No, it was engaging enough. I just wish the plot had been a little more original, or that Embry had used his own hair. Overall, though, I give it a halfhearted recommend.
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
Leave a Reply