Bad Candy – review

Directors: Scott B. Hansen & Desiree Connell

Release date: 2020

Contains spoilers

Anthology films and Halloween would seem to go hand in hand. I have offered mild concern in the past that many anthology films are just unrelated shorts stitched together and, whilst this works sometimes, this can lead to a mismatch of quality of photography, acting and direction.

This flick does not take that route and everything seems filmed for the vehicle. Indeed, like fellow Halloween anthology Trick r Treat, it interweaves and connects the stories.

Halloween theme

After briefly meeting radio host Chilly Billy (Corey Taylor), the film starts with young trick-or-treater Kyra (Riley Sutton) dressed as a witch and racing to meet with her Halloween obsessed friends. The scenes of her on her bike are intercut with a redneck in his pick-up drinking and driving. It makes out that there will be a truck/bike interface until the truck hits a stranded driver and she reaches her friends in a Halloween den. We later discover that the redneck is her step-father. Before she goes in she draws a demonic clown and the paper glows – what Kyra draws is summoned into reality – we later see her friends stopping her casually drawing something.

turned into ornament

Before the friends leave, a bully trick or treater comes by and smashes their pumpkins – he is dressed as Dracula and he runs off when an older member of the gang threatens to go to his mum. We then see him greedily taking more than a fair share of candy and smashing decorations… and watched by the clown. The clown lures him to a nearby place and turns him into a decoration Dracula as punishment for being a dick.

sucking both blood and soul

Returning to Kyra, she is called home by her stepfather and banned from going out. She draws in her room and creates a little monster and a fairy. The father comes in and, knowing her power it seems, smashes the creatures. However she draws something else… The woman appears with a scream (I’m not sure if it was meant to be her mother) and attacks the step-father, sucking, through the very air, his blood (and soul I think). So, this was our first vampiric moment.

Daryl's fake fangs

We also meet uber driver Daryl (Kenneth Trujillo). He starts dressed as Dracula and his friend Derek (Derek Russo) calls him and asks him about the rabbits, Lenny (Micah Brown), loves the rabbits and the pumpkins. We do see him taking on jobs with varying success and then realise that he has a person in the trunk. He eventually takes a prostitute back to her pimp and asks to meet him – starting a bit of a bloodbath with backup from Derek. Eventually they meet up with a third friend, Scotti (Jay Plyburn), and it becomes clear that they served together. Lenny is asleep in Scotti’s vehicle, having been given a Valium.

Dracubus

The rabbits are people, taken by the three. Stripped to their underwear, the pumpkins are to go on their heads and they have blood poured on them and are then let loose. Lenny changes… Now the first instinct would be to say werewolf but, when we see him, he has become a huge man-bat creature. The credits name him as Dracubus (Robert Anderson) and the inference is that Lenny transforms once a year and they put a hunt on for him – the bat shape and the name of the creature lead us to a vampire conclusion.

bat creature detail

The film is pretty well shot and, where it works it works really well. It is kind of disjointed though with more narrative begging to be communicated. Looking at the vampire moments we have a few people dressed as vampires (there are some fleeting moments in a Halloween party as well as the bully and Daryl). The killer of the step-father is vampiric but the scene is on for a fleeting moment. Dracubus is our main one but we get little in the way of story – though the dialogue between the friends works well – and it is more a brief slaughter of those kidnapped. I am, of course, scoring the vampire part only – 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK