The psychological thriller is, first and foremost, a cruel, but extremely exciting movie, most of the fascination of which lies in the study of the psychology of key actors. This is exactly what director David Slade does in the movie “Lollipop” (2005), which is a real decoration of his track record in contrast to the third part of “Twilight”. This is a chamber and inexorably tense picture, in which the main roles were played by Patrick Wilson and Ellen Page, at that time a promising aspiring actress.
Tapes where actors have to play alone, holding the attention of the audience, invariably attract the attention of film critics. Slade thought that personal charisma is not enough for a really bright game, therefore, in his project, the focus is on the acting duet, whose vivid dialogues make the picture spectacular and impressive. Reviews of the movie "Lollipop" is diverse, but most of them are positive. IMDb Rating: 7.10.
Production Features
The description of the movie “Lollipop” is worth starting with the history of its creation. Before debuting in a big movie, David Slade worked on TV for a long time. Improving his visionary skills, he created the short project “Do Geese See God?” In 18 days. After he decided to take up the production of a feature film. Screenwriter Brian Nelson, starting work on writing the script, shared the idea with producer David Higgins.
The filmmaker not only endorsed the idea, but also advised the author to read a note about a Japanese young girl who set up traps for adult men who invited underage "nymphoids" on the Internet for dates. The term, coined by the famous writer Vladimir Nabokov, in this case seems very appropriate. And the original name of the thriller, according to reviewers in the reviews for the movie “Lollipop”, recalls the poster of the first film adaptation of “Lolita” by Stanley Kubrick.
Plot. Caution Spoiler
The disposition in the Slade thriller is as follows. At the center of the story is a successful 32-year-old professional photographer Jeff Cowler (Patrick Wilson). Among other things, he photographs teenage girls, after photographs of half-naked models, he adorns the walls of his house. But his interest in young models is not exclusively professional. Once he meets the 14-year-old girl Haley (Ellen Page) on the Web, meets with her and then takes her home. At this moment, the plot of the film “Lollipop” makes a unique unexpected turn. For a pedophile, a pretty creature does not turn into an object of satisfying base desires, but into a cruel fury that pills sleeping pills in a drink, connecting it and starting to get washed.
Larry Clark had once shown reckless young people to the public in the Kids, but if there the youngsters came off in the scenery of poor areas, then in the Slade project the action takes place in the designer interior of the photographer’s home, so the wildness of what is happening increases at times.
Natural Changeling
Critics in reviews of the movie “Lollipop” focus public attention on the fact that, starting as a classic story about an “innocent child” that fell into the clutches of a “big evil gray wolf,” the plot is turned upside down. The pervert becomes a victim, and the baby gains power, which makes her unusually brutal. Sometimes the screen ruthlessness of the picture really rolls over, while the dialogue between the main characters is many times more interesting than the tortures demonstrated. The main actors of the film “Lollipop”, creating an incredibly harmonious creative duet, extended the author’s intention on themselves, revealing the true background of the picture.
Filmmakers are able to make the audience empathize with negative characters, for example, in “Glorious Guys” the audience is on the side of the gangsters, in the “Iron Lady” sympathizes with the most cruel Prime Minister of Britain, in the “Phone Booth” pity the adulterer and liar. So David Slade managed to arouse sympathy for the trapped pedophile. The fact is that the author first makes the viewers strongly doubt that the character Ellen Page mocks the faithful person. And in the future, viewers are ready to argue about what should be the retribution of the villain, and is the girl too cruel.
Not for impressionable natures
According to reviews, the movie “Lollipop” cannot be recommended for viewing by a wide audience without any restrictions due to a couple of terrifyingly naturalistic scenes. With a light hand of the creators, Haley appears before the public not as a naive child, but as a natural punisher with an angelic appearance, mental deviations worse than Hannibal Lecter and inclinations for surgical experiments that Jack the Ripper would envy. The viewer is horrified to see how she slowly and thoroughly prepares the immobilized hero Patrick Wilson for castration, accompanying her actions with cynical jokes, quoting medical guides. In the memory of moviegoers, a similar episode from the “Law-abiding Citizen” may immediately pop up, but in “Lollipop” the spectacle is several times more brutal. The operation observed from the screen can be considered just a medical video, but watching it can lead to fainting.
Lack of certainty
Director and cameraman Joe Willems succeeded, being satisfied with a minimum of scenery, to bring the level of suspense to a maximum like the masters of Italian giallo: Dario Argento and Mario Bava. The closed space of a bachelor pervert who does not make any secret either from his sexual preferences, or from the youthful trauma that his first love inflicted on him, turns into a real torture chamber. Moreover, the main intrigue of the film is not even the growing danger to the life and health of the photographer, but the fundamental vagueness of his involvement in child molestation and the guilt in the disappearance of one of the victims. The scriptwriter and director seem to turn inside out the traditional thriller situation, offer instead of the unlimited power of the maniac complete confusion and uncertainty that the man cherished sinister plans for a teenage girl.
Career
To all, the viewer is frightened by the lack of irrefutable motivation in the actions of the young “victim”, convincingly and incredibly unchained played by the 18-year-old Ellen Page. After watching Slade’s work, it’s a little unfortunate that since then the actress has played exclusively positive roles (X-Men, Beginning, Komatozniki), a bit of villainy to her face. Patrick Wilson after “Lollipop” became one of the most sought-after Hollywood actors, since then his most famous projects have been on his track record: “The Spell”, “The Keepers”, “Prometheus”, “Astral”, “Passenger”, “Aquaman” and many others.
Director David Slade finally moved away from video-making, successfully realized his potential when creating the projects “Black Mirror”, “Breaking Bad”, “American Gods”, “Hannibal”, “Awakening” and others.
And “Lollipop” is a film, as they say, not for everybody. It is shot perfectly, but the subject can scare away many.