Bad Candy Review

Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!

Plot Summary: A radio host presents a series of tales on Halloween night.

Review: This is like the dollar store version of "Trick 'r Treat," but it's not as bad as some make it out to be. Now, don't get me wrong, this is more low-budget nonsense, yet, there is a level of charm going on and the filmmakers did at least try to make the stories feel interconnected. With that in mind, one of the biggest problems is obviously the quality of these tales. Some are over before you even know they've begun while others drag on far longer than needed. A lack of focus or vision was certainly an issue here so let's take a look at what we have.

The wraparound segment involves a radio host, named Chilly Billy, and his co-host (I guess), Paul. Of note is that Paul is played by a bored Zach Galligan; realistically he should have been cast as Chilly Billy as a further nod to "Gremlins" since they do joke about what happens to him if he eats after midnight. Anyway, these two are sorta telling the stories we see, but it doesn't entirely add up when watching the movie. So, yes, we do get frequent cuts back to these two which does help with transitions. The conclusion to these two connects to the final segment so I'll stop here for now.

The first tale is definitely on the dumb side and presented incoherently. The confusion is mostly due to the filmmakers trying to tell this story while still trying to establish the beats of the anthology. What we get, however, is something with a little girl who can bring her drawings to life. She has an evil dad (or stepdad whatever), that kills her dumb drawings when they come to life. So she makes a Kayako-mom or something to kill the guy. That's more or less what happens, but there's way too much going on here. There is this subplot with a clown guy she created that runs rampant in other segments, but this clown is such a wannabe of Sam from "Trick 'r Treat." The girl's friends seemed like they had their own segment that was removed from the final cut or something. Then there is this brat kid running around being a bitch before the clown guy seemingly captures his soul or something. This is presented as if the clown has been doing this for a long time, but wasn't he just created that night by the girl? What the fuck?

Next up is some pedophile-looking guy putting way, waaaay too much effort into sabotaging candy. This upsets our clown friend who comes to kill pedo-guy. And that's essentially it. Clown man doesn't really toy that much with the guy or anything. I feel like this could have had more tormenting but nope.

Onto the next one, we get another incoherent entry as it's trying to set up characters for other tales while failing to present this story. The main guy is some drug dealer giving out a ton of freebies--which makes no sense--but then it makes even less sense when you realize everyone treats the guy like shit. I actually started to feel bad for this sad soul especially when he simply tries to take a dookie and gets killed by a masked killer who seemingly stalks this public restroom. Damn, this dude got less respect than Rodney Dangerfield. Seriously, other than establishing other characters, what was the point to this?

Moving along, we have creepy Abbie, as she is described by past dates, played by Haley Leary. Well, she's dressed up as a nurse, and that's one of my main weaknesses so we are talking some bonus points here. Abbie works as a...morgue attendant(?)...I guess and decides now is the time to get high from the drugs given to her in the last guy's story. This makes her horny and decide to start dry-humping one of the cadavers. Perks of the job, huh? This dead guy seemingly comes to life and chases our nurse friend into the freezer. Here, Abbie starts tripping out hard which is followed by all the corpses coming to life to have their way with her...maybe. The clown pops up just to lock her in, but, by the end of the movie, it looks like all she did was trip out and imagine the whole thing so who knows. Including a sexy nurse is pretty much a guaranteed extra half point for any movie so there's that.

The next story takes a while to get going since they establish this guy dressed as Dracula driving Uber or whatever beforehand. He picks up this girl dressed as a cop and takes her home. There, the chickadee finds two losers trying to burglarize her house. She has some history with the one guy, and we did see these losers earlier in the film, but for the most part I don't get the point to this. If the one guy is some slimy ex-boyfriend why are they shocked that there's nothing worth stealing in the house? He didn't know? Eventually there are some "Home Alone" level antics of running around followed by the clown guy popping up to kill the burglar. Again, what was the point? Why did the clown intervene, and we also see one of the kids from the first segment as if we are supposed to make some connection. Once more, was something lost along the way? This story in particular felt like Swiss cheese.

Getting back to guy the dressed as Dracula...this segment is probably where this film's budget went. We've seen these annoying prostitutes throughout the movie and Dracula comes to Uber one them off to meet her pimp. At this destination, Dracula starts to fight everyone with the help of his big friend. We come to find out these guys are some kind of ex-soldiers, along with the bathroom killer from earlier, and they're rounding up a bunch of bad people to sacrifice. Apparently their fourth friend turns into some kind of gargoyle monster, and this is to entertain/feed him. The editing in this segment is pretty bad, but the gargoyle effects were cool. I think if you had ditched the clown and had these guys lurking in the background of all segments, collecting victims, that would have worked significantly better for a final payoff. Notwithstanding the shortcomings, this was one of the more interesting and fun segments.

The final story is definitely on the lamer side, however, this was where the filmmakers attempted to bring things full circle. Some ghost hunting team visits an old mansion where some kid was burned alive. They try to make this dramatic, but it's as cookie-cutter as it gets. Meanwhile, Chilly Billy learns that the kid that died was because of Paul doing some prank that got out of hand when he was young. The ghost of the kid appears at the station and seemingly burns everything down, killing Paul. Or was it all really the clown? Eh, all things considered, at least this was a more involved wraparound than most anthologies. Oh, and there is a scene after the credits which could be considered really funny or utterly retarded depending on your outlook.

With significantly more polish, "Bad Candy" might have been a decent, little flick to pop on during the Halloween season. Unfortunately, it is going to be hard to ignore the bouts of shoddy editing, cornball sound effects, and, otherwise, general idiocy running rampant throughout. Still, I can appreciate the effort to tell an interlocking anthology in the vein of "Trick 'r Treat" even though they didn't have the budget or storytelling chops to match that movie.

Notable Moment: When Chilly Billy jokes about Paul eating before midnight. Somehow this felt like it might have been ad-libbed given the reaction, but, either way, this was the kind of antics that should have been played up.

Final Rating: 5/10