Hard Candy (film)

14-year-old Hayley Stark and 32-year-old photographer Jeff Kohlver engage in a sexually charged, flirtatious online chat. Jeff and Hayley meet at a coffeehouse, and he takes her back to his house. Hayley makes them both screwdrivers and asks him to take photographs. Before he can, Jeff loses consciousness.

When Jeff wakes, he is bound to a chair. Hayley explains she has been tracking him and drugged him because she knows he is a pedophile, rapist, and murderer. Jeff denies these allegations, claiming he had innocent intentions. Hayley searches Jeff's house and finds his gun and safe. In the safe, Hayley finds pictures, including a photo of Donna Mauer, a local girl who has been kidnapped and remains missing. Jeff denies involvement in Mauer's disappearance and reaches for his gun. When he attacks Hayley, she asphyxiates him with plastic wrap.

When Jeff wakes, he finds himself bound to a steel table with a bag of ice on his genitals. Hayley explains she will castrate Jeff. Jeff threatens, bribes and sweet-talks Hayley to dissuade her; when that doesn't work, he tries to get her sympathy by telling her he was abused as a child. Following the supposed operation, which Jeff does not feel due to the ice numbing his genitals, Hayley leaves the kitchen, saying she will take a shower.

Jeff frees himself and realizes he is unharmed. He storms off in a rage to get Hayley in the bathroom, where the shower is running. Scalpel in hand, he attacks, but finds the shower empty. Hayley attacks him from behind, and as they struggle, Hayley incapacitates him with a stun gun.

Hayley poses as a police officer and asks Jeff's ex-girlfriend, Janelle, to come immediately to Jeff's house. Jeff regains consciousness to find that Hayley has bound his wrists and hoisted him to stand on a chair in his kitchen with a noose around his neck. Hayley makes Jeff an offer: if he commits suicide, she promises to erase the evidence of his crimes, but if he refuses, she promises to expose his secrets. The conversation is interrupted when a neighbor knocks on the front door, selling girl scout cookies. When Hayley returns, Jeff breaks from his bindings and pursues her to the roof of his house, where she has lured him. Hayley has brought her rope from the kitchen and fashioned it into a noose secured to the chimney. Hayley keeps Jeff at bay with his gun.

Jeff confesses that he watched while another man raped and murdered Mauer. Jeff promises Hayley that, if she spares his life, he will tell her the other man's name so she can exact her revenge. Hayley reveals that she already knows his name, Aaron, and that Aaron said Jeff did it before he killed himself. Janelle arrives, and Hayley once again urges Jeff to hang himself, promising that she will destroy the evidence. Defeated, Jeff lets Hayley slide the noose around his neck, and takes the last fatal step off the roof; after he falls Hayley says "or not". Hayley gathers her belongings and escapes through the woods.

• Elliot Page[lower-alpha 1] as Hayley Stark
• Patrick Wilson as Jeff Kohlver
• Sandra Oh as Judy Tokuda, the neighbor
• Jennifer Holmes as Janelle Rogers
• Erin Kraft as Donna Mauer in photos
• Gabe Kerr as Nighthawks Clerk
• Cori Bright as Girl in Nighthawks

The idea for Hard Candy came from a news story producer David W. Higgins saw on 20/20 about young Japanese girls who would lure older businessmen to a location with the promise of meaningful conversation, only to assault and mug the men with a gang of other girls. This led him to wonder, "What if the person you expect to be the predator is not who you expect it to be? What if it's the other person?" He then hired writer Brian Nelson to flesh out the idea. Due to the controversial nature of the work, the budget was kept under $1 million so that the production company would not ask to change anything.[1]

Very little dubbing was used in the film, with only a couple of lines modified in post-production. Only nine minutes of music are present in the film, with ambient sounds, such as heavy breathing, making up most of the soundtrack. The film was shot in 18 days, largely in sequence, and mostly on a soundstage. Hayley wears a red hooded sweatshirt that is often seen as an allusion to "Little Red Riding Hood". However, this was a serendipitous wardrobe choice by the creative team that was not realized until later on.[1] International marketing for the film made use of this allusion. For example, a tagline on the Japanese site for the film reads: "Red Hood traps the Wolf in his own game."[4]

Jean-Clement Sorret was the digital colorist for the film, this being one of the few instances in which a colorist received a spot in the opening credits.[5] The film contains many coloring effects and "density shifts" of lighting to reflect the moods of the characters. For example, when Hayley gets angry, the colors would be edited to be of lower frequency. One effect used which, as far as the director is aware, had not been done in cinema before, was to brighten the lighting in filming and correct everything down in post-production. This allowed for facial details to be visible even while having a darkened atmosphere.[1] According to the DVD extras, the process required a custom-built digital intermediate to be made and proved to be extremely difficult, with corrections having to be made frame-by-frame in some instances. This technique, known as ETTR, is a standard procedure in digital photography and cinematography to minimize the amount of noise in shadows and midtones.

Early working titles of the script were Vendetta and Snip Snip. The producer wanted a title with a "sugar and spice combination and a mixture of harsh roughness, innocence, and vulnerability", and settled on the title Hard Candy.[5]

The American DVD was released on September 19, 2006 with two commentary tracks, a 52-minute making-of featurette, six deleted and extended scenes, the script and director's notebook, and trailers for Hard Candy and other Lionsgate films. Francis Rizzo III from DVD Talk gave a positive review, praising the DVD's quality and extras.[24] The Blu-ray was released by Lionsgate Home Entertainment on October 5, 2010,[25] and contained the same special features as the DVD. Aaron Peck from High-Def Digest[26] and Jeffrey Kauffman from Blu-ray.com both awarded the Blu-ray four out of five stars.[27]

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• Hard Candy at IMDb
• Hard Candy at AllMovie
• Hard Candy at Box Office Mojo
• Hard Candy at Rotten Tomatoes
• Hard Candy at Metacritic
• October 19, 2003 draft script