couldn't stand Hayley or this movie
For the majority of the movie, I didn't even give a *beep* that he was into teenage girls (which is not technically pedophilia but that's not the point), I just wanted him to kill the annoying brat.
The issue with Hayley is that, similarly to Ellen Page in Juno, she is written to say such unnatural lines for a 14 year old. When she isn't being her witty Juno hipster self, she sounds like she is reading from a pamphlet (and frankly I don't know which of these is more irritating). It got so ridiculous at some points, the lectures she was giving on "when a teenage girl flirts blah blah, when she wants to drink, you take it from her" - note that I am not debating these statements being correct, I am debating the value of a movie that is nothing more than some type of promotional material of the "pedophilia" awareness campaign or some *beep*. She was not a character, she was a propaganda. And even if I'd normally agree with such propaganda, a movie is supposed to be something more.
Which was why I expected at least another layer of depth. Him winning, or maybe giving his character some more complexity or some moral ambiguity to make this more interesting. But no, she keeps being a poster child for "every girl who was ever raped..." (lol), he is the bad guy, the audience must love seeing such a bad pedo get tortured and humiliated during the whole movie and then lose at the end. There was at no point some counterbalance or anything. Except that even despite his character being a straw man, the actor was so good and the character still managed to show so much more humanity and personality than the obnoxious Hayley that I wouldn't be surprised many end up rooting for him. If for nothing, then sheer annoyance.
And the more intelligent viewer would ask the questions that the writers and the director had no guts to ask, which is to explore him more, his motivations, background etc. What made him become who he is. We get some insight into his personal story but it never gets explored enough. Because that is the interesting part when watching something that is supposed to make you think. Not some one dimensional poorly written teenage girl "fighting a good fight." Because of that, despite everyone's intentions, he ends up being the focus of interest and even sympathy. She is on the other hand an epic fail.
It's like an idiot made this movie to rant about a social issue. The whole script is a fantasy of someone who argues too much online about whether or not some actress is too young for guys to call her hot. I don't know, it was just so simplistic and immature it's laughable.