[Film Review] Bad Candy (2021)

Short bites, like the kinds you get in horror anthologies, are highly desired as this, the age of TikTok and Twitter, demands less attention and a speedier, more to-the-point delivery from creators. That said, anthologies are classically strongest when many filmmakers come together to offer different voices and more diverse stories, and this is where Bad Candy, the 2021 anthology horror release from directors Scott B. Hansen and Desiree Connell, falls short. 

The movie is set in the town of New Salem, while the wraparound story finds radio host Chilly Billy (Corey Taylor) and his producer Paul (Zach Galligan) telling spooky tales to his loyal listeners on Halloween night. The first segment in Bad Candy shows a drunk man run over a biker in a sequence that is meant to build tension but instead feels wholly separate from the rest of the story. The focus deviates from a group of kids at a clubhouse to a little shit-kicker boy who destroys pumpkins, and the lack of real narrative sets the movie off on an unfocused route.

The man who committed vehicular manslaughter with no consequence has a daughter, a young Halloween-lover, who just wants to trick-or-treat but is instead forced to stay home. After being locked in her room by her unreasonably angry dad, the girl creates evil little creatures with a magical ability to bring her drawings to life. They keep her company before helping her exact her revenge on her dad in a most satisfying way. The girl previously brought a sinister clown, Mr. Grimm, to life, who now stalks and kills New Salem townies. This clown connects the stories but does so tenuously, as it doesn’t always kill, rather choosing at times to intimidate by staring and even helps a woman in a later segment as she fights off a MAGA-hat wearing creep. 

Another segment revisits the classic razor in the candy legend, showing an old man contaminating desserts for trick-or-treaters before being visited by a most unwelcome guest. From there, while bouncing in and out of Chilly Billy’s radio show, a drug dealer is set upon by a ruthless killer in a disgusting bathroom stall after passing Mr. Grimm on the road (again, the connection between the segments is tenuous at best). 

After the drug dealer has been dispatched, the next segment focuses on a freaky woman with deviant sexual tendencies as she is called into work at the town’s mortuary. This is the most interesting of the stories, as it delves into the dark world of necrophilia and ultimately serves to remind the audience that having sex with dead people is a bad thing, in case we forgot. The MAGA creeper segment follows, and for some reason this basic stalk and slash story is the longest one, or at least it feels as such, with the characters making increasingly unrealistic and unnecessary decisions all to get to the big set-piece at the end. From here we continue through New Salem, witnessing other strange and violent tales, before coming around to Chilly Billy and Paul’s final showdown with their own demons. 

The segments in Bad Candy, while at times entertaining, introduce characters who feel stale, caricatures of classic cliché horror tropes, but the tedious nature of revisiting old familiar stories is made more enjoyable by the viciousness of some of the kills. The filmmakers utilize a mixture of practical and digital effects that are overall successful, but it must be said that this anthology may have benefitted from more contributors because when all is said and done, having only two directors working on the varied storylines leaves the movie feeling a little bit one-note.   

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