Arrow Frightfest 2022 – Film Review -Candy Land (2022)

Gorgeously crafted and intensely sleazy snapshot of a tightly bonded group of mid-90s truck stop sex workers who become targeted by brutal violence.

Director John Swab is no stranger to marginalisation himself, as demonstrated in his previous film Body Brokers, a scathing expose of ethically barren money grabbing in the rehabilitation industry. With Candy Land, he extrapolates this empathetic perspective into the seedy world of a collective of opportunistic youngsters offering a quick fix fuck service for horny truckers, the lonely, and the plain depraved.

Economically weak, they literally live cock to mouth, these promiscuous ‘Lot Lizards’ are treated like free-use orgasm automatons by their clients and cash machine commodities by those that profess to protect them. However, within their prostitutional commune, there exists a warm camaraderie and touching mutual survival strategies. It is this fascinating dynamic that sets Swab’s film free from its grindhouse shackles and elevates it from the exploitation swamp of its premise.

By humanising its protagonists beyond ambitionless cartoon fuck-holes, the movie is able to transcend its trashy roots and earn its right to outlandishly tasteless set-pieces, audacious wipe transitions, and insane plot directions. That being said, the film contains scenes that will test the boundaries of the most seasoned sleaze merchants and trigger the blasphemy reflex of anyone who is theologically disposed.

Although Swab‘s unapologetically stylised B-movie behemoth is fiercely cineliterate and highly technically accomplished it shows no shame in raiding the cult film toybox. As a result, to say things are never dull is somewhat of an understatement.

Once an early scene, that will have Sharon Stone applying for amateur status, is burned onto your retinas you will be left never knowing which luscious portion of cinematic underbelly it will cook up next. Even the opening titles appear in a pink font Tarrentino would pawn his Lone Wolf and Cub collection for and the genius closing song choice is hilarious, nostalgic, and wildly inappropriate all at once.

The acting is universally superb from a clearly talented cast and the dialogue is disarmingly believable. As is the sun-soaked Mise-en-scène that forms the backdrop to the meaty melodrama and visceral violence. You can feel the heat of human degradation on your face, and taste the sweat of sexual desperation on your lips.

At times Candy Land is visualised, and yes the film is shot beautifully despite the ugliness of detritus and death, in the guise of a nightmare fairground. All Blinding lights, swirling fumes, and throbbing engines with a tangible aura of transitory danger tossed on a zephyr of gaudy excitement. Factor in the film’s surreal festive timeline, yes this ferocious riptide of satirical sputum is a bonafide Christmas movie, and we fall victim to Swab‘s intention to subvert expectations and polarise our senses.

Because of its subject matter, the flick has no choice but to stare unflinchingly into the deadened pupils of sex worker abuse. Not least through the eyes of the lawman of the piece Sheriff Rex, played with hangdog malevolence by a dishevelled William Baldwin who appears to have stumbled onto set via a drug breakfast with free for all rape pit madams. It is a remarkably brave depiction of a man whose concept of emotional love is more damaged than some of the pummelled orifices he oversees.

Every one of the lovingly fleshed-out characters gets their moment under the spotlight of traumatic predation, both mental and physical, and at times it’s unbearably uncomfortable to rubber neck at. But thankfully Candy Land is far more than just a fuck-puppet freakshow and gore effects exhibit. It is a complex morality puzzle that showcases the lowest denominators of human nature in order to shine light upon the stoicism of hope and the inherent catharsis of a surrogate family.

This utterly essential genre champion is both a graphic biopsy of the neoplasia that feeds upon the heart of the American Dream and a bleak prognosis of leaving it unchecked. Not since Simon Rumley’s majestically harrowing Red White & Blue has any indie picture felt more effortlessly edgy and relevant.