Candyman is one of the most revered horror films of the ’90s. Can this belated sequel maintain the chills? Read on for the Candyman 2021 review!
I enter every film knowing as little as I can about it. I don’t care for trailers much, preferring a film to unfold, to have no expectations loaded before the first frames roll, and so that’s how I approached Nia DaCosta’s Candyman. And, in the interest of preserving as much mystery as possible, I will endeavor to reveal as little as I can in this review. That said, if you want to go in as blind as I did, and I think the movie benefitted from that, I’ll do the mirror’s reflection of my normal reviews to say that Candyman is a terrific film, one that shows that a movie’s theme can evolve beyond original intent to be even more meaningful than the original work. There, that’s out of the way. Let’s talk about this thing.
First, Candyman is not a remake or reboot. It’s a sequel to the 1992 film, set in modern-day Chicago. Our story revolves around an artist, Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), creatively stifled while his partner, Brianna (Teyonah Parris), supports him in his efforts to prepare a new piece for a show. Anthony has talent, but lately his work has gotten stale. When Brianna’s brother Troy, who has some great comedic moments delivered by Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, and his partner are over for dinner, Troy tells the story of Helen Lyle, the woman from the original film who wound up dying in a fire after presumably stealing a baby. The tale intrigues Anthony, who follows the story to its location – Cabrini-Green.
The former housing project and surrounding neighborhood is in the midst of gentrification, and DaCosta arranges an old laundry right beside a new Pilates Center to help sell the truth of this. As someone who lived in a gentrified neighborhood for many years, her eye for the look is spot-on. Here, Anthony meets the owner of that laundry, a man named Burke, played by the always-reliable Colman Domingo. It’s here he learns the tale of the Candyman, and Anthony finds a new muse for his art in this story. Here, the Candyman was a strange resident of Cabrini-Green, a middle-aged man in a battered coat with a prosthetic hook on his hand. He liked giving out candy to the local kids, but when razors started showing up in kids’ candy, the so-called Candyman was born. Only it wasn’t this precisely that created the legend. It was only after police killed their suspect that Candyman became known to Burke as a child.
Yes, yes, I know that’s not the Candyman you know, but I assure you that DaCosta, along with co-writers Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld, are up to more than straight sequelization. They are exploring two interwoven themes in Candyman, one of which being the aforementioned gentrification, and the other being the need for myth and its utility in making sense of injustice. I assure you that the first film is revered properly here, and the events of that film are merely recontextualized. All the things you loved about the original are intact, but it is impossible to tell the story of this inner-city villain without recognizing the time in which the film is released.
This new Candyman is a monster to be sure, and there are some great creeping scares in the movie. And more than the original, DaCosta plays with the notions of reflection and the two sides of a mirror in ways that are visually captivating and often chilling. And the movie is bloody, no denying that. The body count is substantial, but as I said, this isn’t some mindless sequel intent on raising the stakes in gore alone.
What DaCosta has done is to expand the lore of the first film and give it a weight that speaks to our times. Some might call this overt politicization of Candyman, but then, did you see the first movie? How do you not take a political approach to a film in which the title character is killed for being a black man who made the mistake of falling in love with and impregnating a white woman? The very setting of the 1992 film is described by its characters as a place largely abandoned by police, where the black citizens are walled off by the interstate to live and die without affecting the more affluent citizens of Chicago. The fact that this continuation of the Candyman series is also speaking to racial injustice is no surprise. It would be a surprise if it didn’t address racism in the age of recognized police brutality against people of color and the effect of gentrification on previously black neighborhoods.
The conclusion of the film is not necessarily a hopeful one, but it is a logical one. It is telling that the final frame after the credits roll is a web link to racial justice services, and that the feeling one is left with is that extraordinary effort must be made to stop a cycle of violence. A loop, as the film calls it, and a loop that can only beget more pain and suffering. I don’t know that DaCosta’s Candyman can change the world, but you have to give her credit for trying. And for making a solidly entertaining, occasionally scary, and thought-provoking film in the attempt. If only every movie could generate this kind of buzz. You know, because of the bees. I’ll see myself out…
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