It starts with a highly flirtatious chat-room dialogue in real time. Without seeing the people involved, it quickly becomes clear that an older man has snagged a very young girl on-line, whom he agrees to meet at a coffee shop. When Jeff (Patrick Wilson) arrives, he isn't disappointed in 14-year-old Hayley (Ellen Page). She's the living embodiment of precociousness, and seems game for whatever might happen.

Jeff, however, isn't the classic pedophile. He's young, handsome and a successful photographer — hardly the classic sleazeball in a dirty Mac. The two share an overcharged conversation over lattes, and Jeff mentions that he has a bootleg recording of Goldfrapp at his house. Though Jeff actually seems hesitant about inviting Hayley back, she has all but decided the matter for them.

After a couple rounds of screwdrivers, Hayley begs Jeff to photograph her like a model. She begins to strip, which makes Jeff appear a bit unsteady on his feet. He tries to photograph Hayley, but then everything becomes blurry. When Jeff finally comes to after having passed out, he finds that Hayley has tied him to a chair. The innocent little pick-up is actually Lolita as exterminating angel.

David Slade's Hard Candy is a psychological thriller that touches on a very serious issue, taking its audience on an emotional roller-coaster ride as Hayley confronts a man whom she believes to be a dangerous menace to girls. The film is primarily built on the engrossing torment that a man must endure at the hands of an avenging woman, such as in Death and the Maiden or the film Extremities.

In those films, however, the women are adults exacting revenge for what they — and women in general — have had to suffer at the hands of their male prisoners. Hard Candy portrays a child turning the tables on a would-be predator. Jeff will suffer cruelly under Hayley's hands, to the point where both our sympathy for her anger and our empathy with a fellow human being put under torture fluctuates wildly. Is Jeff the total monster that Hayley believes him to be, or simply a sacrificial substitute? Is Hayley, perhaps, insane? Is Jeff — a man who, after all, trawls for teen girls on the Internet — beyond redemption?

Their duologue, conducted under the brutal conditions that Hayley creates, is necessarily polemical, though it's tempered by a sardonic, almost sadistic, humor. The two fight guile with guile, and if we believe the absolute worst scenario that Hayley has concocted of Jeff's character, what does it say about us if we side with him during an escape attempt? It's the same position in which Hitchcock puts the viewer in Psycho, where we stand as worried as Norman Bates when the car containing Marion Crane's body momentarily refuses to sink into the swamp.

This small, claustrophobic film is constantly engaging, if at times uncomfortable. Slade's camerawork and editing exhibits his background in music videos, with his film's bracing narrative drive and succinctness.

Slade's leads are also excellent. Wilson's Jeff is an extremely likable cad. Obviously suffering from an infantile libido and some underlying emotional trauma, he seems incapable of being guilty of the crimes that Hayley lays at his feet.

As Hayley, Ellen Page puts in a faultless mature performance. She completely captures the girlish, giggly nymphet at the start of the film, only to transform herself into a hardened hanging judge and jury. Yet her Hayley naturally possesses both personality traits. It's the portrait of a young woman on the verge of adulthood who contains both the sullen sophistication of a world-weary woman and the frightened child still not accustomed to pricks of conscience that attend her actions.