So we all know that meeting people over the internet and then in person can be risky, yes?
We're no longer living in the Single White Female age, but instead the times of Myspace hook-ups with related crimes and other modern horrors of the world wide web.
I myself know of this first hand : around the Columbine times, someone in an AOL music chatroom I frequented explained their plan to blow up a high school somewhere I had never heard of. I contacted the police, and after speaking with the FBI, it turned out to be a bored middle-aged man making up false claims. The internet can be a dangerous place to meet people, and HARD CANDY doesn't want us to forget it.

Hayley (the luminous Ellen Page) is meeting Jeff (the clean-cut, sharp eyed Patrick Wilson). Hayley and Jeff have been chatting for about three weeks, both being quite eager to meet the other, which they do in a coffee shop. Jeff is impressed by Hayley, and vice versa. Both of them trade off their equal likes and dislikes, discussing music, literature, as well as Jeff's career as a photographer. Soon after, Jeff is driving Hayley to his house so that he can let her listen to a Goldfrapp bootleg, and shoot her with his camera.

What Hayley knows about Jeff however is something she soon wants to expose us to - his lifestyle, home, and art are questionable, disturbing, but still safe to the untrained eye. Hayley is both the prey and the bait - she suspects that Jeff has committed crimes against girls her own age, having full intent of giving Jeff what he deserves. But through the entire process of Hayley getting back at Jeff, he almost never relents with the conviction that he is innocent. Patrick Wilson's performance is convincing and expertly questionable - do we sympathize with him or not? Are there two sides to his life or is he who he is to outsiders? Ellen Page's Hayley is equally amazing, but really gives the film bite, force, and fury where needed - she never, ever lets her guard down, infusing her character with wit and brain power almost no character her age on screen has ever had previously.

But with great conviction does come questions : is Jeff the person Hayley is sure he is? And is Hayley even fit to take on the situation she has pulled herself and Jeff into?
Director David Slade pushes the envelope with believable context making Hard Candy seem authentic and realistic, despite the out of the ordinary complexity of the two leads. The film is as tight and gripping as the subject matter, as well as the presence of Ellen Page. The pieces of this film fit together so extremely well, I can't help but feel satisfied by the intent and execution.

However, after I left the film I felt strangely aware that I had seen this movie before. Back in 1994, Roman Polanski's Death and the Maiden hit the screen with a similar complexity in a set place. Sigourney Weaver's character in that film was convinced that the abusive past she suffered was at the hands of her sudden house guest Ben Kingsley.. or was it? A similar situation of torture and trial was presented in that film - which to me is an amazing achievement in emotional acting with force and strenuosity. Is it a coincidence that Ellen Page sort of emulates a young Sigourney Weaver in appearance and performance ? Probably. Despite the fact that both films are quite similar, separate they do not need each other to be successful in their own right. Hard Candy is a film that begs to be seen and pleases, with the devastation and fear for a victim and the predator in a seemingly controlled situation.

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