Dir. Sean Byrne, US, 2015, 79 mins
Cast: Ethan Embry, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Shiri Appleby, Kiara Glasco
Review by Colin Dibben
Struggling artist Jesse (Embry) moves his wife Astrid (Appleby) and daughter Zooey (Glasco) into a lonesome rural house, to help him focus on his painting.
Dad and Zooey love a bit of heavy metal rock – and so does Ray (Vince), the previous inhabitant of the house. Ray moved out after pushing his mum down the stairs. He hears voices, but keeps them quiet by playing long, loud, droning notes on a bright red Gibson Flying V guitar. The other motel guests are not happy.
Jesse is soon hearing the voices too. His painting takes a dark turn, starts to feature black, upside-down crosses, which, of course, his gallery is ecstatic about. Then local children go missing and Jesse has visions of their gruesome demise, which also make their way into his paintings. The gallery likes that too, although Astrid and Zooey are less sure.
Will Jesse work out what is going on in time to save his family?
Sean Byrne’s 2025 film Dangerous Animals got good reviews, so I was looking forward to this. And pretty shocked by how bad it was. The acting is watchable, with Embry and Glasco keeping it credible at least. But the dialogue falls back into cliché over and over again.
Worst, though, is the earnest tone of the film which makes it come across as preachy, quite literally, as in: arguing for a violent Christian redemption from Satanic conspiracy and possession. Everything in the film has Christian allegorical connotations – even the name of Jesse’s art gallery!
In the interests of transparency, I should point out that I could not watch this film all the way through. It isn’t bad enough to be cheesy fun and it certainly is not disturbing or creepy fun in a dark Hail Satan! way. It is just so on the nose and flat that I honestly thought it was one of those cheap right-wing, Christian propaganda movies, the kind of film that might be made by Chuck Norris’ son in league with an old-time evangelist.
Special features are nicely technically focused and include:
- New 4K Producer restoration
- Audio commentary with director Sean Byrne
- Into the Fire: a new interview with director Sean Byrne
- Those Fragile Things: a new interview with actor Ethan Embry
- Devil in the Details: a new interview with director of Photography Simon Chapman
- The Cutting Room: a new interview with editor Andy Canny
The Devil’s Candy is out in a limited edition 4K UHD/ Blu-ray box set on 25 May 2026, from Second Sight Films.
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