Five-Legged Iguana

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I've Seen in the Past Year
[1 of 13]

THE DEVIL'S CANDY

(September 2015)

"We've come to the place where we joke about the idea of the Devil. With the horns and the tail and all that. But that is Satan’s Lie. To distract us from the reality of who He is.”

Writer/director Sean Byrne was last ‘round these parts when his feature debut, The Loved Ones, nabbed the Aussie Horror Runner-Up slot on the ¡Qué horror! 2011 rundown.

He’s back (and no longer a blood-spattered bridesmaid!), with his brutally metal follow-up, The Devil’s Candy.

Here, Byrne takes the “a family’s hopes for a new life are shattered when they encounter the darkness that comes along with the new house they just bought” set-up and serves up a disturbing look at a world where evil is insidiously ubiquitous, where a prominent art gallery is called Belial (as in “Now that you’re being represented by Belial, it’s time for you to start getting used to nice things.”) and has an employee named Mara (as per the Buddhist demon).

Byrne gathers an interestingly effective cast here, which includes Shiri Appleby (who’s come a long way from Roswell’s Liz), Ethan Embry (who’s come an even longer way from Empire Records’ lovable goofus Mark), and the creeptastic Pruitt Taylor Vince.

There are also brief, but memorable appearances by Leland Orser (whose Father David Gideon lays on the film’s central thesis via a “Thought for the Day”) and Tony Amendola (taking a break from playing Once Upon a Time’s Geppetto to embody Leonard of Belial).

So, yeah, let’s all raise those horns and savor The Devil’s Candy, as Sean Byrne continues to show us just how wickedly serious he is about his horror…

“I have to feed Him children… ‘cause children are His candy.”

(The Devil’s Candy OS’ courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)