Candy Land

It's not horror, it's not action, it's not drama, not even a fantasy!

I don't know how and why this movie was released.

I don't know what kind of acting is this exactly.

Most of the movies supposed to be meant something (true story or there is a wisdom on it and maybe sometimes could be funny but in this movie there was nothing but wasting time.

I don't recommend this movie to any kind of natural human no matter what their age is and specially the teen age. It will not benefits them nothing but a bad and crap thoughts and drag them to a different path.

And I am sure that many people will agree with me.

It's 1996. Sadie (Sam Quartin), Riley (Eden Brolin), Levi (Owen Campbell), and Liv (Virginia de Witt) are prostitutes working a truck stop in the desert, locally known as Candy Land. Sheriff Rex (William Baldwin) often makes sexual demands on Levi. Nora (Guinevere Turner) is their madam. Remy (Olivia Luccardi) is a runaway from the local religious cult who befriends the group.

As an inside expose on this underworld, this has its moments. As a horror, it runs into a few problems. The biggest one is that it needs more mystery. The movie needs to deliver some red herrings to throw off suspicions. It's probably trying to suggest an unknown someone from the cult. The killer is too obvious and it's soon revealed anyways. This is partly interesting, but could be so much better.

Candy Land looks like a B-movie, feels like a B-movie, is a B-movie. Not that aren't good B-movies, but this one is just not one of them. The story is just a bit stupid. Plenty of murders, no investigations whatsoever, nobody slightly worried about the rising death toll, it's just bad writing. The acting is just average, certainly no award winners here. William Baldwin, the less famous one of the family, plays the sheriff, you wonder how he got that job as he's not slightly interested in doing any police work. He acts okay but his character is just dumb. I wouldn't waste my time with this one if I were you, there are much better movies than Candy Land.

Remember the 1970s? That would be helpful. Bottom line, Candy Land is what might happen if you took a Ninja blender and mixed together a 1970s sexploitation film and a 1970s slasher film. By that standard, the end result would be better than you might expect. The acting is solid, the script adequate, and the direction restrained. The typical over-amped soundtrack of the 1970s films -- where gaps in the action are filled in with raw noise -- is nowhere to be found, and that is a very good thing. In fact, almost every aspect of this film is toned down, and that works well too. The only recognizable star is William "Billy" Baldwin, who has been in the biz since the late 1980s. Above average for an indie. ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

Candy Land is another good example that it doesn't take a lot of different sets or a huge budget to create a visually appealing work - what a nice cinematography, but even better, what an incredible editing! - that, at the same time, fulfills its goals of entertaining with quality.

All this could seem like a kind of sexploitation. That's what the beginning of the first act implies. Calm down. Let those who already had stones to throw calm down. Let those who thought they were going to watch a porno also calm down. The first 15 minutes show more explicit nudity than what we're used to in North American cinema (which, truth be told, is very limited), but that's pretty much the end of it. Better yet, these women are true characters, all of them are very well built and are dignified by a story that doesn't just want to show their tits nor wants them to be seen only with pity. They do what they have to do, things are going relatively well and they form a real team with moments of real camaraderie that are very well-built. There's also a man in the same circumstances, but Candy Land's greatest triumph is that it's always interesting in the way it tells its story and explores gray areas.

Even when it commits excesses - such slaughter in such a short space of time makes us have to question our credulity in the story - it continues to be a work with something to say and very well constructed. It is in its excesses that it also has many of its virtues, but it is in its simplicity that its characters conquer us. It tells us a lot about prejudice, religious fanaticism, and friendship, without forgetting to entertain us and give us a real bloodbath.