10 Movies That Made You Sympathise With Terrible People

Chris Hansen’s “=To Catch a Predator has received criticism for the voyeuristic nature of the set-up, with comedian Charlie Brooker claiming that “when a TV makes you feel sorry for potential child-rapists, you know it’s doing something wrong”.

Hard Candy takes the notion of sympathising with the paedophile and the desire for vengeance and blurs the two. Imagine if instead of a Chris Hansen confrontation, the paedophile is drugged and tortured by the child they had come to assault.

Hard Candy knows that the prevailing sentiment towards paedophiles is one of disgust and that they deserve the most medieval of punishments. So it shows us this scenario, as enacted by the potential victim, and tests how much of it we can stomach. Patrick Wilson seems so harmless as Jeff that I assumed the twist was going to be that Hayley (Ellen Page) had captured the wrong guy.

Of course that’s not the case - Jeff is both a child-rapist and murderer. Hayley puts Jeff through utter torment before finally blackmailing him into suicide. Is this treatment just punishment for a dangerous child-rapist? Or is cruel and unusual? Jeff arguably doesn’t deserve any sympathy despite the film managing to elicit some, thus questioning society’s blood-lust when it comes to the punishment of his type.