CANDY LAND

  2022/93m

“We’ll take care of you.”

Director/Writer: John Swab / Cast: Olivia Luccardi, Sam Quartin, Eden Brolin, Owen Campbell, Virginia Rand, Guinevere Turner, William Baldwin, Brad Carter, Bruce Davis.

Body Count: 27+

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Beware thy necessary spoilers.

Admittedly, when I read Candy Land was a slasher pic centered around sex workers at a truck stop, I pictured some regurgitated 80s throwback script with a succession of underdressed hot women being judgmentally offed by a wacko, while the patrons of their services get away scot free. And with the very first shot is of a naked chick riding a guy in the cab of a truck, I thought my suspicions were justified.

So it was a nice surprise when Candy Land turned out be something of an insightful little gem that adheres to the expected, but does so without leering at its subjects like they’re irredeemable filth.

In 1996, a quartet of sex workers (Sadie, Liv, Riley, and Levi) run their ‘lot lizard’ business out of a truck stop motel alongside a remote highway. They turn tricks for cash in cabs, behind the dumpsters, in the bathroom, and get boarding from owner Nora, while local Sheriff Rex gives them no trouble in exchange for freebies from lone-male hustler Levi. This includes being lax about investigating the discovery of a mutilated corpse found in a bathroom stall. Other visitors include judgey Christians from a local cult, who routinely stop by to tell them to repent before it’s too late.

Ejected from this cult one day comes Remy, a sheltered girl covered by a thrift store dress out of Grandma’s 1950s collection, who is taken in by the group, fed, given a place to sleep, and taught the trade, if she wants to stick around. Receptively, Remy copies the others as best she can, but soon reveals that the bulky wooden cross she carries with her contains a lethal blade, which she uses to skewer, slash, and de-eye the men who try to lay their hands on her, including a sleazy old priest and a family man who’s “never done this before”.

Praying that she’s saving them from themselves, Remy soon finds herself having to eliminate any witnesses, including one of the other girls and a luckless motorist who stumbles in on a kill. Then she sets about killing just about everybody for Jesus, before posing as the sole survivor and getting Rex to drive her back to the cult, where an intense end scene unfurls, which, if I’m honest, catapulted Candy Land up an extra star from ‘nicely done’ subcultural slasher to unsettling comment on opposing facets of American culture: Religious extremes and hedonism.

While the outcome is pretty bleak and there’s no real hero/heroine figure to root for, John Swab has written a group of interesting characters who exist in a non-traditional family unit, look out for one another, and possess awareness of the risks they face, emphasised in a scene where Levi is beaten by a patron who then rapes him. Visual objectification feels like a necessity here, given the subject matter, but at least seems to be from a place of art rather than titillation, and is sure to comment that those who judge most harshly are more often than not the ones frequenting the hookers’ services.

Blurb-of-interest: Owen Campbell was in X.