Sean Byrne knows how to show an audience a bad time. Sixteen years ago, the Australian filmmaker launched onto the scene with “The Loved Ones,” his proudly grisly debut about a misfit teenager who gets gruesome revenge on the boy who refused to go to prom with her. Part expert torture porn, part exploration of adolescent romantic anxieties, the film was an instant midnight-madness cult item that took Byrne six years to follow up.

When he did, he went in a different tonal direction with “The Devil’s Candy,” a surprisingly emotional psychological thriller about a heavy-metal-loving painter who moves his family to a beautifully rustic home, only to lose his mind. Working in recognizable horror subgenres, Byrne entices you with a familiar premise and then slowly teases apart the tropes, lea

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