Candy review: Hulu miniseries is hamstrung by unsteady grasp of a thorny true-crime story

Candy, which continues Hulu’s true-crime spree this year, begins with what can only be described as part on-the-nose foreshadowing and part queerness of coincidence. On Friday the 13th of June 1980, Texas homemaker Candy Montgomery (Jessica Biel) struck her friend and neighbour Betty Gore (Melanie Lynskey) 41 times with an axe. This was a month or so after the premiere of Friday the 13th, where a group of teen camp counsellors suffered a similar fate at the hands of a killer with an axe. Moments before her murder, Betty is seen reading a local newspaper carrying a review of another 1980 release: The Shining. The camera holds on the review of Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic, where an axe plays an unforgettable supporting role as well. “It’s a shrieking shame,” reads the headline in what is a fitting judgment for Candy itself.

Through Candy and Betty, the five-part miniseries by Nick Antosca and Robin Veith intends to explore the polarity of perception vs truth through the lens of dissatisfied housewives. It not only fails those intentions, but also the parallel whydunit ambitions of its true-crime story. When Candy was arrested, it was found out she had been involved in an affair with Betty’s husband Allan (Pablo Schreiber). She was tried for murder and found not guilty after mounting a successful argument that she had struck the axe — to be sure — 41 times in self-defence. A striking scene at the end of the fourth episode demonstrates the brutal nature of the literal overkill in a bloodless way. Candy’s husband Pat (Timothy Simons), in a moment of doubt over his wife’s innocence, sneaks out of bed at night, picks up an axe, and attempts to strike a tree stump with 41 blows. He can’t get past 34, gives up depleted, laughing in relief that there’s no way she could have done it.

When you think of a person who would brutally murder a neighbour and leave a crying baby alone in the crib, you don’t imagine a chirpy housewife, mother and Sunday school teacher who gossips with the church pastor and plays volleyball at the community centre. But that’s Candy for you. Betty, by contrast, is a quiet, lonely and downcast housewife struggling with a new-born baby who won’t stop crying, a husband always away on work trips, no friends, and no life outside her home. Between the two, if anyone might give in to her frustration and lose it, you would think it’s Betty. The show plays our presumptions to its advantage to serve its ironic juxtaposition — just as Candy too did to defend herself during the legal proceedings.

On the outside, Candy may appear to live up to her name. On the inside, there’s a rot growing over the pressure to be perfect and devoting her entire life to pleasing everyone but herself. With Betty, what you see is pretty much what you get. She isn’t concealing the truth of her postpartum depression and loneliness behind oversized glasses and a ready smile. Candy and Betty’s respective suburban houses are designed to draw a visual distinction of their dispositions. Candy lives in a big and airy house: the curtains are always open; the ceilings are high; the costumes, walls and floors are of bright colours. Betty lives in a smaller, dimly lit home: the curtains remain half-closed; the floors and the carpeting are dull browns; the walls and ceilings seem to be closing in on her.

But both the housewives feel unappreciated, like their husbands don’t even acknowledge them as people with needs and desires. Biel builds on the range she displayed in The Sinner, walking a tight rope between credibility and caricature when it comes to these kind of period recreations. The curly perm doesn’t distract us from a performance of calculated deception. Lynskey’s ill-fitting bobs with bangs are a little more distracting because her character is underwritten to victim status. But there’s never any doubt over the painful reality of Betty’s quiet suffering.

As is custom nowadays, the show gets the ball rolling with the crime, before turning back the clock to set up the context. On the morning of the tragedy, we follow Candy as she makes pancakes for her husband, kids and Betty’s older daughter Alisa who is staying over at their house, takes the kids to church, drops by Betty’s house to pick up Alisa’s swimsuit, kills Betty, returns to church and takes the kids to go see the new Star Wars movie. In an emotionally charged sequence in the premiere, Allan, who is away on another work trip, calls his wife from the hotel room. Tension escalates each time Betty doesn’t answer. Ariel Marx’s score ramps it up further. You sense Allan’s desperation when he calls his neighbour to check on her, and his anguish when his worst fears are confirmed. The confrontation that led to the crime is depicted only during the courtroom drama of the finale. Investigating the crime are two deputies, played by Biel and Lynskey’s respective husbands Justin Timberlake and Jason Ritter, in a clever bit of casting. The three episodes in between the premiere and the finale recreate a suburban world of church moms and gossipy cliques, survey the inner lives of Candy and Betty, and chart their brief friendship.

Candy is hamstrung by Antosca and Veith’s unsteady grasp of a thorny material. The showrunners become trapped in a familiar true-crime quandary of wanting to have their cake and eat it too: to give a voice to the victim while centering the story around the killer. This is best illustrated in the finale, where Candy offers her account of how an argument over an affair with Betty’s husband turned violent and whatever she did was done in self-defence. “That’s your story,” says the ghost of Betty, who has been watching the whole trial, hoping the court of law will get her some form of justice. The jury of course buys Candy’s argument and acquits her. And all Betty’s ghost can do is stand in disbelief. After all, she will never be able to tell her side of the story.

Given Candy and her lawyer (Raúl Esparza) were able to convince a jury that swinging the axe at someone 41 times was not disproportionate for an act of self-defence, you would think at least the trial would make for more fascinating viewing. Alas, it doesn’t. The crime and the verdict in itself are however shocking enough for TV’s storytellers to rehash something that took place over four decades ago. With its true-crime hook and parts of the truth still elusive, HBO has its own dramatization — titled Love and Death from Big Little Lies creator David E Kelley and starring Elizabeth Olsen as Candy — ready to launch before the end of the year. We will have to wait and see if that fares any better.

Candy is streaming on Disney+ Hotstar

Prahlad Srihari is a film and music writer based in Bengaluru.

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