The Candy Shop
is a 2010 Short Film that acts as a fable about child trafficking. In a Depression-era town, Jimmy seeks to gain money for his ailing mom when a seemingly kind man opens up a strange candy shop that caters to adult men, with its prize product being hauntingly beautiful lollipops.
The shop owner promises Jimmy more money than he can make with his paper route if he becomes his protege, and Jimmy is tempted to accept the offer. But when young girls start to vanish around town and have similar traits to the candies, Jimmy gets suspicious of the man, and must take action when his friend Nancy gets kidnapped.
Not to be confused with The Candy Shop War.
What tropes the film has in store are:
- Big Bad: The candy shop owner uses his business as a front to have young girls kidnapped, turned into candy, and sold off to willing customers.
- Bittersweet Ending: Jimmy kills the owner, saves Nancy and a handful of the girls, but not all of them were saved and a new shop will soon open to take its place.
- Bystander Syndrome: When Jimmy says someone should stop the goings-on at the Candy Shop, his boss says what happens there is none of their business.
- Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are: The candy shop owner actually says this word for word as he looks for Jimmy in order to kill him.
- Corrupted Character Copy: The owner is based on Willy Wonka and runs a candy business, but that is all they have in common. He lures in female children in order to make them into candy.
- Damsel in Distress: Nancy is one of the owner's victims and Jimmy fights him in order to save her and whatever he can of the kidnapped girls.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Invoked with the candy as an allegory for child trafficking.
- Evil Is Bigger: The owner as he's played by tall and towering Doug Jones.
- Evil Old Folks: Under the owner's appearance as a handsome young-looking man is a hideous old one who turns innocent young girls into candy.
- Here We Go Again!: The film ends with a flyer for a new candy shop, the Confectionary, being advertised.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The candy shop owner gets finished off when Jimmy gets him killed by part of his own machine.
- Human Traffickers: What the owner of the Candy Shop really runs. He turns young girls into candy and traffics them off to customers.
- Karmic Death: The candy shop owner turned his victims into candy with a machine. Him getting offed by it when Jimmy pushes him in would serve him right.
- Lean and Mean: The owner is played by the lanky Doug Jones and is a vile child trafficker.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: When Jimmy finally tries to stop him, the owner tries to beat him down with a pipe.
- Sinister Suffocation: One of the ways the owner tries to kill Jimmy is trying to fatally strangle him.
- Ugly All Along: Initially appearing as an handsome and elegant-looking man it's revealed that the candy shop owner was actually wearing make-up and he's in fact an hideous old man with dirty black teeth.
- Villainous Breakdown: After Jimmy turns the machine off the owner gets murderously enraged and tries to personally kill him with a pipe.
- Would Hurt a Child: The owner turns children into candy to be sold off with no regards to any pieces potentially being too damaged to be reverted back into children. He also tries to kill Jimmy, saying he'd look "good on a stick".