I remember, on a particular occasion, listening to a Baptist preacher go on and on about how Satan was the destroyer, and how he would try to tear a family apart. It was my sister’s wedding, so it kind of brought the room down.
But it got me to thinking about how a couple of the better horror films I’ve watched recently - The VVitch and Hereditary - work with this very idea, the idea that evil worms its way into a family and destroys them from within, by capitalizing on their weaknesses as individuals and as a unit. Well, add The Devil’s Candy to that list. It’s a tense, expressionistic story about evil’s effect on two families, made with a great deal of skill and attention to detail.
It begins with whispers in the ear of Raymond, a hulking manchild. We can’t quite hear what the whispers are saying, but it isn’t good. Raymond doesn’t like the whispers. They tell him to do things. So Raymond drowns the whispers out by playing the guitar, loud. Ominous, droning chords like a rolling bank of storm clouds. Raymond’s mother doesn’t approve, so he pushes her down the stairs.
But that was some time ago, and now Jesse, his wife Astrid, and their daughter Zooey are late for an appointment. Jesse’s a painter, and he’s been working on a commission for a local bank. It’s not work that fulfills him, but it brings in money. And they’re going to need it, because they’d discovered a deal on a house out in the country, a big, old turn-of-the-century number going for a song. They’re going to meet with the realtor, and once they see the house it’s love at first sight. Lots of original details, plenty of space, and a big barn out back that Jesse can turn into a studio. Oh, there’s just one thing, the realtor says, By law he has to disclose any deaths that have taken place in the house, and here there have been two. An older woman fell down the stairs, and her husband perished shortly after.
But it’s a big, gorgeous house, and they should be able to afford it as long as Jesse can keep picking up commissions. So they buy a house. And that’s when the troubles start. Jesse starts having nightmares, troubling visions that pour their way out of him into artwork he doesn’t even really remember painting. He loses large chunks of time. He starts hearing whispers. And then, one sedate night, there’s a knock on the door.
Raymond has come home.
We really have two stories here. The first is Raymond’s - he’s been away for some time, but now he’s come back to the only home he’s ever known, and he’s awfully taken with Zooey for some reason. Raymond has given up fighting the voices whispering inside his head, and he’s doing the terrible things they tell him to do. The second story is that of Jesse and his family. Well, it’s more about Jesse’s soul, as well as the soul of his family - he’s an artist and has to follow his muse, but he also wants to give his family a better life, so he takes commissions for stuff he doesn’t like painting, and so there’s this situation where something powerful is moving through him, speaking through him, and there’s compelling art coming from it, and there’s someone willing to dangle a lot of money in front of him for that work, but it’s also taking a toll on the relationship he has with his family. We’ve seen the way the pressures to provide can lead to horrible ends in the The Shining (though this family is far more sympathetic), and so he’s tempted by the money and prestige selling this new work would bring, even though it’s basically draining him of everything good. And they really do need the money. But in addition to the war for Jesse’s soul there’s a very real threat in the form of Raymond out there too, and so the film goes back and forth between these two stories, and we watch as they slowly converge and come to their inevitable collision.
It’s not exactly a character study, but the main characters are sketched out well and believably. Jesse, Astrid and Zooey feel like an actual family with a great deal of love for each other, and as a result the film feels as much like a battle for their salvation as anything else. You don’t usually think of horror films that way, but these three are such basically good, decent people that you’re as much rooting for them to be okay as you are for evil to be defeated. Raymond is doing terrible things, but you never really lose sight of the lost, broken child that he really is. He knows what he’s doing is wrong, but he can’t stop doing them. The voices won’t let him. There’s still implacable menace there, but he never feels like a cartoon villain.
This skill and care extends to the technical aspects of the film as well. The pacing is top-notch, starting slowly, introducing parallel threats, one earthly, one more spiritual, and ratcheting up the tension before stomping on the gas in a relentless third act. This film does a lot with reveals, sudden, dramatic cuts from one place to another, using powerfully composed shots to convey the emotion of the scene. A lot of tension is created in the editing, lots of close-ups on the act of painting (matched against horrible aftermath in one particularly compelling sequence), and a bold use of the color red throughout to signal heat, menace, blood, danger. It’s very much grounded in realism but still has all kinds of little arch touches, subtle Satanic references that sort of keep you on your toes, and it’s set in rural Texas, so the lighting and cinematography remind me a lot of
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with better production values. Everything looks hot, people are sweaty, the sun beats down in the daytime, everything is dry and dusty. You’d think they were already burning in a lake of fire just to look at the screen.
In the sound design, it’s also very much a love letter to metal - Zooey and Jesse share a love of it, and the soundtrack is well curated with examples of the genre that complements the film’s mood in different ways throughout. Sonically, it’s exactly the right choice - aggressive, abrasive, and sinister by turns, and as a style of music that often relies on Satanic imagery, so it’s consonant with the themes of the film, but here it’s actually sort of an antidote to the devil. The love of it bonds Jesse and Zooey, and Raymond uses it to keep the voices at bay. The director’s previous film,
The Loved Ones, also used music to great effect, so its integration into the story here comes as no surprise. It reflects and enhances the themes and imagery of the film while also ironically commenting on them.
It’s interesting, in some ways this is a really classic sort of haunted-house story - family moves into a house with a dark past, dad starts to kind of lose his shit and it’s up to his family to rescue him and keep himself alive. And it’s not afraid to get kind of old-school with its use of the devil, either. But it’s not as grim as films like The VVitch or Hereditary, and I think the big difference is the kind of family we have here. Those films explore how misunderstandings and resentments and lack of communication open the door to evil, and here we have a family who loves and cares for each other, and in the end that makes all the difference. That might sound corny, but it doesn’t come off that way. Make no mistake, it doesn’t pull many punches, and it had me on the edge of my seat. But after a few disappointingly mechanical efforts, it’s nice to watch something that’s really good, and after some seriously bleak films (which I do like), it’s nice to watch one that gives us people we can really care about. Satan may be the destroyer, but he doesn’t tear every family apart.
This was a good one. The relationship between the father and daughter was very well-drawn.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think that went a long way to adding tension to the film. You *want* these people to be okay. As the director put it, "if you don't care, there's no scare," and it's nice to see a director get that when so many horror films have these really unlikeable protagonists.
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