Ray hears a voice and it won’t stop. He has tried everything to drown it out, finally settling on strumming his electric guitar to quell the noise. When his mother makes him stop playing the guitar he violently lashes out at her and goes on the run, but the voice makes Ray aware that he is just getting started…

Ethan Embry’s (Late Phases, Cheap Thrills) character moves into Ray’s old house and begins to hear the same threatening voice. As a struggling artist, he channels its message through himself and onto the canvas. With some spray paint and some rockin’ tunes the artist battles against the evil lurking in the shadows of his mind as well as in reality.

The movie tries a bit too hard to push the metal music to the forefront to the point where it gets corny. The plot is straightforward to a fault; The Devil’s Candy would have benefited from some more exciting material. On the other hand, the pacing/editing gets unnecessarily obtuse periodically. The blood spilled is enough for a thriller, but I would have cranked it up to 11 for a film like this. I found myself bored every time Ray wasn’t on the screen which felt like a large chunk of the runtime. Apparently 11mins was cut out from the festival version but I’m not certain if whatever was missing would have helped or hindered this mediocre final product.

3 flying Vs out of 5

★★★☆☆