Film review: The Devil’s Candy is a sweet reminder of the power of horror

Ethan Embry gives a stellar performance in The Devil’s Candy, a superb ‘heavy-metal horror’ with real heart – and a great soundtrack – which transcends its formulaic roots.

Ethan Embry in The Devil’s Candy. Courtesy Front Row Filmed Entertainment

The Devil’s Candy

Director: Sean Byrne

Stars: Ethan Embry, Shiri Appleby, Kiara Glasco

Four stars

The basic premise of The Devil's Candy – an unwitting family moves into a house targeted by a killer who believes the devil talks to him – suggests a B-movie shocker of limited originality and artistic worth.

Even the title sounds like something you would find in the DVD bargain bin of your local supermarket.

The tag of “heavy-metal horror”, meanwhile, conjures images of 1980s-style silliness. The opening scenes – in which we are introduced to a nervy, apparently mentally impaired giant of a man who has to play heavy metal on a guitar at high volume to drown out the voice of a devil in his head telling him to kill children – does little to reassure. It all sounds somewhat tacky, to say the least.

It is a pleasant surprise, then, that director Sean Byrne has crafted a minor masterpiece of the genre out of what initially seems a limited, derivative premise: heavy-metal fan Jesse (Ethan Embry) buys an isolated house in the Texas countryside that is surprisingly cheap, and moves in with his wife Astrid (Shiri Appleby) and daughter Zooey (Kiara Glasco).

It comes as no surprise to the audience to learn that, yes, someone died there and, yes, there appears to be an evil ­presence.

For all the horror trappings, though, this is a film about family and a father’s love for his child.

Jesse and his wife and daughter might seem an unconventional nuclear family. And the more usual approach of filmmakers is to paint heavy-metal fans as either figures of fun, as in Wayne's World or Spinal Tap, or tortured outsiders, as in any one of thousands of formulaic horror movies.

Here, though, their unusual external appearance and musical taste serve merely to underscore their otherwise completely ­ordinary family life.

The macho image of tattooed metal warrior Jesse, meanwhile, means the personal torture he endures is all the more poignant – no amount of muscles or fearsome attitude can save him from this latest enemy, it seems.

Embry’s performance is one of the film’s greatest strengths. His relationship with, and ­protectiveness of, his daughter, are utterly convincing, as is his growing terror and bewilderment at what is happening to his family as things spiral out of control.

A tight script and some classy cinematography also serve to elevate the movie well above standard horror fare. That said, the filmmakers are well aware of the genre in which they are working and are not ashamed to embrace it.

A brutal encounter involving a Flying V guitar in a burning building, for example, offers a cheeky nod both to the tackier elements of 1980s horror and the excesses of stadium rock concerts.

It is genre fare par excellence and if the violence all gets too much, just cover your eyes – the film is worth the price of a ­ticket for an awesome soundtrack alone, featuring the likes of Slayer, Metallica, Machinehead and PJ Harvey.