“I[didn’t] know what horror was till I had twins,” laughs Sean Byrne.
The lauded director behind the Australian cult classic The Loved Ones and his newest The Devil’s Candy is talking to the BRAG in a rare moment of peace, having just managed to get his two three-year-olds out the door to childcare. “It’s like going to war,” he says, joking. Kind of.
But Byrne should be thanking his young brood. The twins served as the starting point for The Devil’s Candy, an impeccably crafted chiller about a young, heavy-metal-obsessed father – the appropriately named Jesse Hellman (Ethan Embry) – who begins to face a rapidly escalating series of supernatural threats.
“I think a large part of The Devil’s Candy comes from parental fears,” Byrne explains. “I started writing it when my wife was pregnant and continued writing it when the kids were born. I think it’s kind of an allegory for the worst possible scenario … I was kind of terrified of the prospect of becoming a parent.”
The film’s titular devil comes to play a large, if mostly unseen part in the film, driving a serial killer called Ray (expertly portrayed by Pruitt Taylor Vince) to harass Jesse and his family. But despite the strong supernatural theme at the heart of The Devil’s Candy, Byrne’s initial draft was a much more stripped-down, realistic home invasion thriller.
“[It] started out as a story about a child predator,” Byrne says. “Basically that was extremely difficult to get financing for, because whenever you’ve got a story about kids in peril, executives tend to get quite scared. I found it interesting – if we’re exploring the dark heart of humanity, then that’s kind of too confronting for people. But as soon as you bring in a supernatural element or start blaming it on the devil, then it’s like, ‘Oh, everything’s OK as long as it wasn’t us.’
“I had to keep bending it to meet the market,” Byrne adds. “It became a supernatural film out of necessity. Then the task for me was to be really excited about that direction … It was really just a change in the atmosphere.”
Certainly, when it comes to atmosphere, Byrne has exceeded himself – The Devil’s Candy is expertly directed. Byrne pulls out every one of the tricks he has in his blood-soaked bag, utilising such deranged directorial flourishes as rapid montages, unsettlingly drawn-out bouts of slow-motion, and terrifying onslaughts of sound.
“[Sound is] the forgotten hero of horror filmmaking,” Byrne says. “[It’s how] I experience life – through sound as much as I do visuals. I grew up listening to metal and loving metal.”
Indeed, along with casual demonic worship, heavy metal is another of the film’s strong through lines. But it’s never mocked or belittled – the characters are at their most tender when they are throwing up their metal horns, and as much as The Devil’s Candy is a horror film, it’s also a testament to the binding power of hard rock tunes.
“The film has a long-haired, heavy metal hero. I [had] never seen that kind of character [as] a father before,” Byrne says. “Metal characters are usually treated as buffoons. It’s like a cliché. But I mean, in real life people are a product of their influences. I wanted his relationship with his daughter [to be] authentic. I think if you do that – if characters work in a behavioural sense as opposed to an expositional sense – you embrace them. You’re not being treated like an idiot as an audience member.”
Catch The Devil’s Candy [dir. Sean Byrne] at Dendy Newtown on Wednesday June 15 and Event Cinemas George Street on Saturday June 18, as part of the Sydney Film Festival 2016.
