The Devil's Candy | Movie Review

Sean Byrne, the director of the remarkable The Loved Ones (2009), returns to directing with The Devil's Candy (USA - 2015), a powerful film that embraces horror, art and metal music and has been released in Italy thanks to Midnight Factory. The film falls into the boundless list of films in which the home is depicted not as the loving nest of a family but as a theater of horror (link to our special) in which evil rules the lives of its intended victims.

Protagonist of The Devil's Candy is Jesse Hellman (Ethan Embry), a metal painter who moves into a new home in Texas with his wife Astrid and teenage daughter Zooey. The new home, however, will exert a dark fascination on the family man whose art will be influenced by satanic forces. His wife and daughter then will begin to fear Ray (Pruitt Taylor Vince), the son of the former owners of the house.

The story focuses on a perfect family where harmony reigns and where a malevolent entity will create the right cracks there to sow discord and confusion. The new home, home of the evil one, will welcome the new family unit to mold it to its liking. The chosen target is the head of the household Jesse, a painter who, in order to pay the mortgage on the new home, distorts and stifles his artistic vein to go along with people's pictorial taste.
Guided by a malevolent influence, the artist will thus find his true inspiration by tapping into the blackness with which his own soul is being covered. Almost commissioned by the Devil, the new paintings will prove to be premonitions and revelations of a horror that has acted and continues to act silently.

Into this path dense with anguish and dark atmospheres comes the figure of an unsuspected serial killer (Pruitt Taylor Vince) who, pervaded by the voice of evil, is guilty of heinous crimes. Murderer and painter thus become the disciples of the evil one while a powerful metal soundtrack (Goya, Sunn O))), Slayer, Machine Head, The Wanton Bishops...) darkly decorates every single sequence. In the end credits (in which Metallica's "Master of Puppets" sweeps in) moreover, illustrations from the Song of theInferno Dante made by Gustave Doré highlight more the devilish soul of The Devil's Candy, extraordinary film in which art, music and death become satanic tools, extraordinary symbolic connotations functional to the story.

In the cast of The Devil's Candy: Ethan Embry (Vacancy), Shiri Appleby, Kiara Glasco, Pruitt Taylor Vince (The Cell, Monster, Constantine), Marco Perella, Craig Nigh, Oryan West and Mylinda Royer. The paintings featured in the film were created by artist Stephen Kasner.
The Devil's Candy debuted in Italian theaters on Sept. 7 thanks to Midnight Factory and is part of our list on the Best horror movies of 2017.

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The Devil's Candy is featured in the Midnight Factory catalog from January 18, 2018. In addition to digital download, the film is also available in the curated DVD and Blu-ray limited edition formats, both accompanied by the ever-present and rich booklet (review by The Devil's Candy and info on the film, insights into the director and his cinema).
Impeccable audio-video quality of the Blu-ray housed inside an amaray with hardback slipcase.
The extras compartment features only the film's trailer.