The Devil's Candy (2017)

A lot of fun.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

I'm on the side on the nay-sayers here. Generic heavy metal music, a lot happening in darkness, and a whole lot of cliche. It's not a TERRIBLE movie, but it's also certainly nothing above the ordinary. I can enjoy heavy music just fine, the music itself is not my beef here, but the whole "heavy metal = satan" is crap. It's just lazy. There's no real suspense, we can't see anything, and cool tattooed dad paints butterflies with kids' faces and many-eyed goats and all that = scary satan stuff, is just tedious. Andy Williams songs would have been more jarringly disconcerting. (OK, maybe not a great choice.) Nah, sorry. From 2015, give me Bone Tomahawk, The Witch, We are Still Here, Green Room, The Lure, and even The Visit, before ever even thinking about this one. I know, I know, to each his own etc. Of course.

This movie starts as your typical haunted house movie. But then starts to take shape and differentiate. There's no twist whatsoever, just a terror movie done right. The soundtrack is excellent.

Following the generally favorable reviews, I thought "The Devil's Candy" would at least be above average. It's not. Even at less than 80 minutes (the last four or five minutes are devoted to credits), the film is slow-paced. The best scenes include the big guy with the flying V guitar and a big Marshall amp. Is this movie a horror movie? Almost, but not quite. Is this movie a thriller? Almost, but not quite. Or, does it fail in both genres? Don't bother to decide. Don't watch it.

Now, see, this is what a Rob Zombie movie should be.Definitely one of the most effective and satisfying horror movies of the past several years. While it's not perfect, it hit ALL it needed to and never overstayed its welcome.What started off as a roll-of-my-eyes quickly redeemed itself as the plot veered far away from the old horror movie tropes. A family moves into a bargain of a house after a murder had taken place. Not your average, every day murder, but that's the whole point.Naturally, they family (Mom, Dad, Teen) are not well off, but they got some artistic dreams. While the father hears stirs of echoes in his head, the most obvious creepy stalker of kids finds this teen as his latest obsession.There's a lot going on in the plot, but mercifully, the straight arrow – the one most interesting to follow – is on target to get this nicely wrapped up with an ending I always crave, though rarely see. Highly recommended. It feels small, low budget and simultaneously ambitious with what they were provided. Definitely a must for horror fans. Totally rocks!***Final thoughts: Here's another I missed during my horror-movie-month obsession of October. Luckily it FINALLY came available on Netflix, and I glad I saw it, even if just a bit outside October.