Bad Candy (2021): and the curse of Halloween Horror Movies (DVD Review)

Packed to the rafters with Halloween tropes, what this uneven anthology lacks in scares, it makes up for it in gore and pumpkins.

Horror anthology TV series are all the rage at the moment, but apart from a few honourable mentions (the Tales from the Crypt series for retro fans, or more recently Trick r Treat and A Field Guide to Evil), horror anthology on the big screen don’t enjoy the best of reputations and unfortunately, Bad Candy isn’t going to do anything to change that. There’s no shortage of ideas as we’re presented with seven-ish stories of the scary variety. That’s the nice thing about anthologies – didn’t like the last story? Here’s another! The film is anchored around a Halloween radio host Chilly Billy (Slipknot’s Corey Taylor) hosting a spooky story phone in for Halloween (think a spooky Frasier) but just how real are the stories being told and why the heck is this creepy clown following everyone around?

We begin with teen witch Kyra (Riley Sutton) who, prevented from going trick or treating by her abusive stepfather, conjures some mythical creatures to come to her rescue. At the same time, a wayward child who delights in smashing pumpkins and stealing sweets is stalked by an imposing clown, the titular Bad Candy. Next, local weirdo Mr Grimsley (Bill Pacer) is gleefully handing out razor blade filled chocolate bars, enter Bad Candy to show him the errors of his ways. It’s here that evil clown Bad Candy goes AWOL and the stories moral coda in horror we’ve come to expect appears to go askew. Kindly drug dealer Charlie (Ryan Kiser) doesn’t do anything in particular to warrant the wrath of a devil-masked psycho. Sexually frustrated mortuary nurse Abbie’s (Haley Leary) drug-fueled foray into necrophilia barely deserves the zombie-filled nightmare she faces. Then there are the people used as bait by ex-army veteran turned cabbie Daryl (Kenneth Trujillo) for his were-bat friend, their crime appears to be the deadly sin of… rudeness?

These stories are gory for the sake of it, which will satisfy those viewers with a thirst for blood and juvenile ‘everybody dies in gruesome ways’ horror but unfortunately, it also means the scares have left the building. Bad Candy pops up again to dole out some just desserts for Marie (Alexandra Lucchesi) and her abusive boyfriend, but it’s too late to make a lasting impact. The last story picks up the pace, with psychic newscaster Judy (Tordy Clark) having visions of the past in a haunted house – frustratingly this story actually has legs, but nowhere near enough time to breath and is tenuously linked back to shock jock Chilly Billy and his producer (Zach Galligan, of Gremlins fame, completely wasted here) for a lacklustre ending that makes you wonder, just like your hangover on November 1^st, if the whole thing was worth it?

There are some things Bad Candy does do well. I’ve never seen a harder working prop’s department, almost every scene has some sort of Halloween paraphernalia and its wall-to-wall pumpkins for most of the movie, which I appreciated in a holiday-themed movie. Many horror anthologies don’t pay too much mind to link their stories whereas Bad Candy has clearly thought about the links that bind the tales together and there’s a somewhat satisfying element to that. Unfortunately, the early retirement of the clown and the moral meander that the film takes halfway through means that the whole package feels uneven. Bad Candy the clown isn’t the movie’s big bad, he’s just one of several fiendish ends that could meet the poor characters on Halloween night, whose fate is sealed as soon as they come into camera focus. Cutting down on the number of stories and allowing the stronger tales room to breathe, developing some characters and giving us a reason to invest in them, and building up suspense would have elevated Bad Candy from background noise to the main feature on Halloween night.

THANKS FOR READING DAVID’S REVIEW OF BAD CANDY

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