Movie Review: Bad Candy

credit: Bad Candy

With Halloween on the way, it’s only right to start focusing on the things that go bump in the night and everything that tries to bump but ends up tripping and falling into a rotting pile of pumpkins or something equally nasty. Despite having been out for the past couple of years, it’s easy to understand why Bad Candy hasn’t really been on the lips of so many horror buffs since the stories held within this movie are juvenile as hell but kind of fun at the same time. In a big way, it does feel as though a couple of these stories are something that might have been thought up by those who know what they want to see but can’t quite translate that to the screen. The one redeeming quality that this movie possesses is that it does star Corey Taylor, the lead singer of Slipknot, as Chilly Billy, a DJ that’s telling each story as it happens, as though it’s not real. Of course, things turn out to be very real when all is said and done, but it’s an entertaining ride, all the same, one realizes that shutting off their brain and parking themselves for a couple of hours is the best way to enjoy this movie. 

credit: Bad Candy

As horror movies go, it could be placed in the comedy section without fail. 

There is enough hilarity placed into each story, even if it’s not meant to be taken that way. A couple of the stories might lean a little heavily into the actual horror aspect that the movie is going for, but containing your laughter might be a little more difficult when it comes to the manner in which some of the people in this movie meet their end. It’s not tough at all to think that some folks hide their fear by laughing since it can be passed off as a nervous tic or something that hides just how close a person is to peeing their pants out of sheer terror. But this movie inspires laughs simply because so much of the material is ridiculous, and to be fair, laughter is better than a sneer or an eye roll brought on by boredom. If you’re not in the mood to give this movie the benefit of the doubt and just enjoy it, then it’s probably best to avoid it at all costs. 

If you like disjointed anthologies, then this is the movie for you. 

The attempt to keep everything under the anthological umbrella that is Bad Candy is admirable in a way, but at the same time, it feels as though each one of these stories could easily be located in another town or another state and have absolutely nothing to do with each other. In fact, it kind of does feel that way even if it’s made clear that everything is happening in this town and that the DJ is trying to entertain the people who might be listening. The effect is lost in a big way since each story feels as though it’s self-contained and doesn’t have any bearing on the others, even if the Halloween theme helps to connect them. Movies like Trick ‘R Treat did a far better job of keeping the overall connection between stories alive since the characters would occasionally be within sight of each other, and it’s far more obvious that they’re in the same location since one set will be seen more than once. It does happen that we get to see the same scenery in this movie, but one has to be watching closely, or they might feel as though they’re watching a different movie from one story to the next. 

credit: Bad Candy

Some of these stories have been done and overdone for years. 

The razors and other materials in the candy, kids misbehaving, ghost stories, and many other stories have been done in numerous ways and so many times that trying to come up with something new is a little tough. But the fact that people still keep making them without regard for what’s already come before and how it’s been done is a little confusing since one might think that some folks would finally decide to sit down and think up something that hasn’t been seen in a while, or hasn’t been seen before by this generation. Hey, it’s possible. 

This does feel like a bad copy of Trick ‘R Treat. 

In all honesty, this movie does have its own ideas and does use others that have been passed around for years, but the manner in which the stories play out does feel like a knockoff of Trick ‘R Treat. But at the same time, the movie has distanced itself enough from the 2007 cult classic by creating its own characters and its own storylines. The only problem is that none of them are particularly good, even if they can make a person laugh.