The Devil is in the Details The Devil’s Candy from Second Sight

Let me tell you something about Ethan Embry. If you grew up in the ’90s with any kind of taste, Empire Records and Can’t Hardly Wait are basically sacred texts. Rex Manning Day is a holiday. So when Embry shows up in something, there’s an immediate goodwill deposit that gets made, a kind of “okay, I’m already in, show me what you’ve got” energy that’s hard to manufacture any other way. Sean Byrne’s The Devil’s Candy (2015, wide release 2017) takes that goodwill and absolutely weaponizes it, building a film around Embry that is equal parts family drama, heavy metal fever dream, and flat-out terrifying horror. If you’ve somehow missed this one, Second Sight Films just gave you the perfect excuse to fix that.

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The setup is deceptively simple. Jesse (Embry) is a struggling painter, a heavy metal loving Texas dad trying to hold his family together while chasing something meaningful in his art. He, his wife Astrid (Shiri Appleby, doing real work here), and daughter Zooey (Kiara Glasco) move into a rural Texas dream home at a price that should raise every red flag imaginable. It does not raise red flags for Jesse, because Jesse is an optimist. Jesse is wrong. Shortly after settling in, he starts hearing voices that push his paintings into increasingly dark, obsessive territory. Upside-down crosses. Demonic imagery. Hours lost in a fugue state in front of the canvas. If this sounds familiar, Byrne is fully aware of the haunted house genre’s greatest hits, but what he does with the formula is where The Devil’s Candy separates itself from the pack.

Because the film isn’t really about the house. It’s about Ray (Pruitt Taylor Vince, doing some of the most unsettling physical work you’ll see in a genre film), the hulking, deeply unwell son of the home’s previous owners, who keeps showing up on the family’s doorstep, fixated on Zooey in ways that are far more viscerally disturbing than any supernatural framing device. Vince is extraordinary here, a walking threat that feels entirely real in a way that horror films rarely achieve. Paired against Embry’s Jesse, who is simultaneously losing his grip on reality and fighting like hell for his family, the dynamic creates this tension that Byrne never releases. Not once. The film runs 79 minutes and it uses every single one of them.

The heavy metal angle isn’t window dressing, either. This is a point worth emphasizing because lesser films use music as vibe and nothing more. Here, the soundtrack (Metallica, Anthrax, Sunn O))), among others) functions almost as a character, the connective tissue between Jesse’s artistic possession and Ray’s own brand of compulsion. There’s a shot of Ray driving, blasting a Flying V guitar through a portable amp while barreling down a Texas highway, that is one of the most memorably strange and menacing images in recent horror. Byrne understands that metal is about volume as control, about drowning something out, and the film lives in that space.

Which brings us to why Second Sight’s new Limited Edition 4K UHD/Blu-ray box set o, dropping May 25, 2026, is worth your attention and your money. A new 4K producer restoration presented in HDR with Dolby Vision means this film, which is built on texture and shadow and the horrifying warmth of Texas sunlight on a house that should feel safe, finally looks the way Byrne and cinematographer Simon Chapman intended. The bonus features are genuinely substantive: a director’s commentary, new interviews with Byrne, Embry, Chapman, editor Andy Canny, and production designer Tom Hammock, plus a 120-page book with essays from some of the sharpest voices in genre criticism. This isn’t a cash grab reissue. Second Sight clearly loves this film, and it shows.

The interview lineup deserves a closer look because these aren’t the usual EPK talking heads. “Into the Fire” with Byrne, “Those Fragile Things” with Embry, “Devil in the Details” with Chapman, “The Cutting Room” with Canny, and “A Big Step Forward” with Hammock all offer specific insight into the specific function of the interviewees. The interview with Hammock in particular offers so much insight into the heavy metal aspects of the film as they are filtered through the dark art of the protaganist. It’s a great guided tour for young filmmakers on how to create depth through the choices of the production design. Throw in a VFX breakdown, Byrne’s early short film Advantage Satan (which tells you everything about his sensibilities in two words), six collectors’ art cards, and a rigid slipcase featuring new artwork from Huan Do, and this box set treats the film with the reverence a underseen gem like this has always deserved.

The Devil’s Candy is the rare horror movie that earns its scares by making you care first, an 80-minute gut punch that trusts its audience and respects its genre. If Ethan Embry isn’t on your radar as a legitimate leading man in horror, this is the film that changes that. Play it loud.