from Film Forum, 04/20/06
If you have kids and an Internet connection, you probably know how dangerous that combination can be. The Web can give sexual predators easy access to vulnerable and naïve victims.
But in director David Slade's new movie Hard Candy, a sexual predator gets a nasty surprise. His target, a smart 14-year-old girl named Hayley, turns the tables on him, and the result is violent and troubling. Who will you root for? The sex predator, or the girl with a taste for cruelty?
David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) would rather that you didn't see it at all. "Slade's film starts out as an intriguing cautionary tale, but despite riveting performances quickly descends into exploitative territory, rather than saying anything of substance about its serious subject matter, while its blurred delineation between 'victim' and 'predator' further muddies its murky morality."
Impressed, disgusted, enthralled, horrified—mainstream critics are reacting in many and varied ways.