Brain-Nelson, an incredibly unfamiliar name, has never been remembered even after searching his mind twice; However, the script written by Brian left a deep impression on Lance. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

"Fruit hard candy".

In fact, the work "Hard Fruit Candy" is not famous, and many people know this work because of Alan Peggy. After Allen became popular with "Juno", many people noticed "Fruit Hard Candy" - this work successfully allowed Allen to leave the previously active Canadian film and television industry and enter Hollywood.

Objectively speaking, "Fruit Hard Candy" has never attracted a wide range of attention, failed to cause a box office response during the release, and has not been able to gain more results in the video rental market after it was lowered; Not to mention that the awards season has attracted attention, even in independent film meccas such as the Sundance Film Festival and the American Independent Spirit Awards, they have not been able to attract the attention of producers; Even the film critics paid very little attention to the work, and it was not enthusiastically followed on IMDB.

However, is this work really that ordinary? Of course not.

In the previous life, Lance stumbled upon this work in a DVD rental shop many years after it came out, not because of Allen, but because the poster is very distinctive, a little girl in a red hat stands on top of a mousetrap, and the black horror mockery is presented through the paper. Intrigued, Lance decided to rent it and take it home, and it was only then that he discovered this unique masterpiece.

"Fruit hard candy" is an Internet term, "hard-candy", referring to underage girls. This is the story of an underage girl.

A 14-year-old girl and a 32-year-old photographer chatted on the Internet for a while, and then decided to meet in a café. But in reality, the photographer is a lover/child/fetish, and one of the girl's friends disappeared after meeting the photographer, so the girl decided to find out the truth of the matter single-handedly and punish the lover/child/fetish in her own way - castration.

It's a thrilling story, but it's also very interesting, because it's always hard to tell who is the hunter and who's the prey; It is also difficult to tell who is righteous and who is evil. The film uses an almost absurd noir technique to constantly switch the identities of the perpetrator and the victim, which seriously challenges the audience's moral bottom line and secular concepts.

Lance later researched the background of the work, and the creators were inspired by real Japanese cases. Schoolgirls start hunting down older men who seek to date underage girls online, and once the girl gets in touch with each other online, she and her friends set up ambushes and attacks at the date location. This also means that this is not a fantasy, but a social reality, only that the film gives more drama.

This reminded Lance of the movie "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and the original novel. In the movie, the part where the girl was raped/raped was mentioned, but whether it was the original Swedish version or the American revision, it did not take a lot of pen and ink to describe it, and then the girl made the other party fool again by fishing, but she successfully fought back, taught the other party a hard lesson in her own way, and made the other party lose the ability to rape/rape again.

Legally, such an act is wrong, and private retaliation will only lead to endless consequences; However, morally speaking, in the 21st century, many countries and regions, many private groups, including many social fields, countering violence with violence and retaliating with a tooth for a tooth are still the unique rules of survival.

In particular, the core topic of the "Fruit Hard Candy" discussion: love/child/fetish.

It is precisely because minor children do not have the ability to resist, or even the ability to appeal, that adult guardians and society are required to supervise, control, and punish them, and in the European and American legal systems, cases involving minors will be particularly sensitive. But the reality is that most minors are unable to tell their inner secrets, or adults refuse to believe them, or minors cannot find evidence to avenge themselves.

This, then, brings the question back to the core idea of Lance's trilogy of sin: Is social apathy, a crime?

Of course, "Fruit Hard Candy" explores less profound issues and has a different angle. What this work really discusses is the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim, and the change and movement of initiative between the two protagonists leads to the fact that both the perpetrator and the victim are constantly changing positions, and they are becoming more and more sensitive to the challenge of moral nerves.

The controversy sparked by this work is that love/childhood/fetishism should indeed be punished, but shouldn't this underage girl's dehumanizing and harsh punishment be punished? This struggle of human nature has become a long-standing hot topic among fans.

In the previous life, Lance thought the same way, and his reflections on crime, human nature, morality, and lynching were surging after the end of the movie; But in this life, after experiencing more precipitation and the creation of the crime trilogy, Lance began to question himself, is this really the core idea of the movie?

Shouldn't the real theme of the movie be that after the criminal is tried, which is more effective, physical punishment or mental punishment? Or, more recently, is it physical pain or mental fear that is really effective in curbing crime? So, what role do the alienation, loneliness, and fear caused by social apathy play in the process of crime?

"Hard Fruit Candy" is not, and should not be, a continuation of the crime trilogy, but more from a single individual case, to discuss the nature of crime at a deep level, as well as social causes, individual psychological causes, and so on. There is no criticism, no scrutiny, no reflection, more like a kind of self-discussion and inquiry, if the crime trilogy is in the same vein, then "Fruit Hard Candy" returns to the original point, standing in another position, interpreting the same social issues from a completely different perspective.

But it's a pity that in the script of the previous life, it can be seen that Brian should also be a screenwriter from a stage play, and the movie describes a lot of the inner changes and mental states of the two leading actors, as if the camera is a stage, but he has not been able to dig deep and explore the core of these themes, as if he is just satisfied with creating a psychological thriller movie.

Of course, the director is also one of the important reasons.

David Slade, the director of "Hard Candy", is not well known, this work was his feature film debut, and later directed such works as "Thirty Polar Nights" and "Twilight 3: Lunar Eclipse", but more often he was still active in the field of television dramas. "Hannibal" is his work.

As can be seen from the list of his works, his handling of detail tension, the creation of a thriller atmosphere, and the outline of aesthetic violence are all very good, and he has a good achievement in thriller action movies. This is also the source of the final product style of the previous "fruit hard candy".

However, David is not good at the creation of characters, which loses many of the essence of Brian's script, and also loses the opportunity to further explore and sublimate; In addition, David pays too much attention to the creation of a thriller atmosphere, but loses his grasp of the plot, which makes the story slightly thin, and also loses the portrayal of motives, psychology, and characters, resulting in only horror and fear after watching the movie, but less reflection.

It can be said that this is a common problem of almost all thriller movies or horror movies. When Lance was filming "Killing with a Knife", in order to portray the character, he sacrificed the deliberate creation of a thriller atmosphere, and instead used lighting to create a sense of alienation and coldness, which also has a price, "Killing with a Knife" is not afraid or scary, but always has a depressing sense of explosion; Correspondingly, it also makes the movie deeper and more shocking.

You can't win 'em all.

"Hard Candy" is a good work, the idea of the script, the structure of the stage play, the director's use of light and rhythm, the effect of the thriller atmosphere, etc., are enough to impress the audience, but that's all. It can be seen from the results of the movie that the box office, film critics, and audiences are not too fanatical.

Ten years after the release of "Fruit Hard Candy", it actually caused a lot of repercussions in the rental market, with 120,000 people scoring on IMDB, which shows that the movie is attractive and has caused a lot of controversy; But the score has never been up or down, and it has not been able to create miracles.

When Lance saw "Hard Fruit Candy" on the blacklist, the first thought that came to his mind was: If I were to shoot it, what would it look like?

After this idea came up, Lance couldn't stop, he not only began to think about how he would make changes to the script, how to use lines to shape the characters, and how to create an atmosphere through the actors' performances, he hoped to distinguish it from "killing with a knife" and use more light on "thriller"; At the same time, he began to think about how to arrange the camera and how to use the narrow space to highlight the confrontation between the two people in such a small stage space, which took place in the same room for more than three-quarters of the film......

"Hard Candy" is a more pure stage script than "The Queen", but at the same time more interesting, closer to Lance's ideas, and most importantly, inspires Lance's endless creative inspiration.

Thinking of this, Lance suddenly sat up straight, startling the three people opposite, he directly picked up his mobile phone and dialed Franklin's number, skipping the polite link, "'Fruit hard candy', in the blacklist...... Uh, the seventy-seven work, can you fax me the script? (To be continued.) )