The Candy Shop

The Candy Shop from Whitestone Motion Pictures on Vimeo.

A friend recently pointed me to this movie as an interesting look at child sex trafficking.  It is a fairytale/parable and as such is not graphic in its details.  (However, it is still dealing with a mature topic, so is not recommended for children.) I thought the movie itself was very well done and did an excellent job portraying the whole issue of child sex trafficking.  For example, the man selling the candy (i.e. the children) showed clearly the kind of manipulation used in both getting children and in recruiting buyers.  He didn't necessarily use violence, but he verbally manipulated them to do what he wanted them to do.

(Note: the rest of this review gives away the ending.)

At the end of the movie, when the candy started changing back into children, I was thinking, "That is not realistic!  If a child has been sold and was used sexually, they can't just magically undo it!"  I thought the whole movie had been ruined by making it seem that the solution was simple and quick.  However, once the children came out and were presenting the box of broken pieces of candy, it made more sense.  They had been able to rescue several children before any damage had been done.  But there were also some who had already lost their innocence.  (Although, in real life, there would be a lot more broken pieces.)

Finally, the very last scene showed that even though we may be able to rescue one group of children, that doesn't get rid of the issue completely.  There are always more sellers and more buyers.  Simply rescuing children doesn't solve the problem.  Yes, it's much, much better than doing nothing at all.  But we also need to work to stop child trafficking at the source - the men (and women) who purchase these precious young children.