Ah, Netflix. How I have forsaken thee! Well, mostly how I have watched TV on thee instead of movies, but definitely there was forsaking that occurred as well. It’s cool, though, we made up. Which, come to think of it, is probably not the best metaphor with which to open this review. So forget the Netflix stuff entirely except if you care about where I got the movie from, and pretend like I started with the next paragraph instead.

So anyway, I watched a movie last night. Except, that’s not where it started. Around this time last year (except imdb tells me it was more like two years ago), I saw a preview for a movie. I’m not convinced it ever got wide theatrical release, and I am quite sure I never found a place it was showing. If I remembered where I saw the preview, that might help, I guess. But I only remember the preview itself and my reaction to it, instead. Basically, it was a series of scenes implying a cat-and-mouse game between an adult photographer and a teenaged girl, but with the added spice that it was difficult to say who was the cat and who the mouse. Which, of course, made it ironically clear that the sexual predator guy was going to end up the mouse. But this is a good thing, because I think it would have been impossible to want to watch it, without that assurance. Instead, I was filled with intriguement. So, I waited and watched and eventually slipped it into my Netflix queue, the payoff of which occurred last night.

The movie went largely as predicted, which was not any kind of problem at all. Of course the ending stayed shrouded in mystery, but knowing all the stuff up to then wasn’t the point. Because the acting was really good and the situation was compellingly disturbing from the first moment until nearly the last. I know it’s not a particularly controversial position to take here, but I really had no idea just how visceral my negative reaction to the predator guy was going to be. Going in, I had the thought that maybe I was going to end up feeling sorry for him being trapped in Hayley’s web (Hayley being the Hard Candy in question), but that never happened. Sure, some of her actions were horrific or at least uncomfortable, but not once did I feel like his targetting was unfair.[1] Which (I’ll assume) says something else positive about the acting quality.

It’s hard to say I liked it, because it was so unpleasant to behold. But it was really very good, and it’s easy to say I was impressed by it. I don’t think I’d watch it again if I could help it, though. Those movies that really root around in the darkness of the human psyche (8MM and Schindler’s List spring to mind) tend to provide everything on the first viewing, as starkly as possible, as if to say, “See this? Don’t do this! Ever!”

(Footnote contains spoilers, sort of.)

[1] For spoiler-laden clarity: prior to the climactic scenes, he performed no more than one overt and one covert act that one could deem legally out of bounds. And the overt one was not anything directly connected to pedophilia. Nevertheless, he was wrong in that creepy probably pedophile way from his first line of clearly-innocuous-on-paper dialogue.