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There is something eerily special and surprisingly heartfelt about Sean Byrne’s The Devil’s Candy. Following his 2010 directorial debut with dark-humoured teen horror, The Loved Ones, the Aussie director returns to the big-screen with yet another sublime, gory and shockingly moving tale of family, passion and satanic madness.

The story is centred on passionate, heavy-metal-listening, long-haired painter, Jesse Hellman (Embry) who, along with his teenage daughter Zooey (Glasco) and wife Astrid (Appleby), is excited to finally move into a home they actually own; a cheap but a relatively spacious old mansion with a violent history located just outside of a small town in rural Texas.

Falling under the pressure of having to sell a lot more paintings in order to pay off the mortgage, Jesse is determined to make their life in their new home a happy one. However, things soon take a turn for the strange when he starts going into trances and blacking out for hours at a time, all the while being summoned to fill his large canvases with strange, demonic visions which mainly include images of screaming children. To make things even stranger, the son of the home’s previous owner, Ray (Vince) – a mentally disturbed man who is driven by the voices in his head – soon begins to stalk Zoey before eventually making his mark on the house, and the rest of the residents of the home he once lived in.

Amped up by a loud – and superbly effective – heavy-metal score and embellished with plenty of gore and brutal violence throughout, The Devil’s Candy is definitely not your everyday horror fare. Digging deep into the human psyche, Byrne manages to preserve the viewer’s morbid fascination with the subject explored throughout, attempting, ever so slightly, to paint over the line between passion and madness. Unafraid to pull you into its dark embrace, Byrne – who also penned the script – doesn’t overcrowd the picture with unnecessary characters and unrealised subplots and relies heavily on the mood – created through a masterful use of both sound and image – to create the desired effect.

The characters in his film are equally looked-after with Embry – a former 90’s teen idol – finding plenty of ways to make the audiences believe, while both of the female leads, as well Vince as the overweight and immensely creepy Ray, delivered solid performances.

All in all, The Devil’s Candy ­­­– although perhaps a little too brief – is one solid, terrifying and beautifully rendered feature which thanks to the director’s clear vision, committed performances and one seriously wicked heavy-metal soundtrack, serves to be one of the most entrancing and original home-invasion horror films to date.