Released in 1992, the original Candyman was marketed as a slasher film of the popcorn variety but turned out to be a different kind of uniquely American horror story. The title stalker, who like Bloody Mary is summoned through the repeated invocation of his name in front of a mirror, was the vengeful spirit of a 19th-century Black man named Daniel Robitaille (immortalized by the beloved Tony Todd), lynched for the seemingly inexcusable crime of falling in love, and fathering a child, with a white woman. Set in Chicago, a century after Robitaille’s sadistic murder, and largely in the Cabrini-Green housing projects north of the city, Candyman was a campfire parable of race in America that was as indebted to the then-still-recent Do the Right Thing as it was to modern horror standards such as Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street.
However thoughtful and prescient as it was at the time, the original film, based on a Clive Barker short story and directed by Bernard Rose, notably featured a white lady protagonist named Helen Lyle. Played by the excellent Virginia Madsen, Helen is a privileged outsider peering into the projects – the film isn’t shy about pointing that out – a grad student turned sociological detective who gets in way over her head at Cabrini-Green. All this background is crucial to fully appreciating what the sly new Candyman installment is up to, the established mythology this highly anticipated film is interrogating.
Directed and co-written by Nia DaCosta, and produced and co-written by Jordan Peele (with an additional production and writing credit from Win Rosenfeld), Candyman is being pitched as a somewhat reboot and direct sequel to the 1992 phenomenon. Much like 2018’s Halloween, it brushes away interim entries, in this case 1995’s Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh and 1999’s Candyman: Day of the Dead. But similar to the Scream franchise, it’s fixated on self-reference. Callbacks abound, and Easter eggs can be spotted in nearly every scene.
You can enter the theater as a virgin and still follow, and maybe even relish in, Candyman’s basic story. A recurring puppet show provides all the necessary exposition, and then some, thanks to solemn narration and silhouetted marionettes (a device clearly inspired by the amazing “three brothers” sequence from the penultimate Harry Potter film). This version of Candyman, however, is more akin to musical interpolation, where prior melodies and motifs are revisited and explored with an expectation of at least some familiarity with the source material.
Underlying the film’s prominent themes, concerning race and class, is a notion of circularity and fatalism. One character candidly states the obvious: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” So, Candyman is, quite explicitly, the mirror image of its predecessor. (Get it?) Its opening sequence is a literal visual inversion. Its lead characters are Black (and in one instance, also queer). Its revenge targets are often the opposite. Cabrini-Green, with its former “particularly bad reputation,” now features luxury high-rise buildings that comfortably house our new, posh protagonists.
They are Anthony and Brianna, played by the equally terrific Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (recently seen in HBO’s “Watchmen”) and Teyonah Parris (the MCU’s Monica Rambeau), romantic partners both working in the art world. He’s a struggling artist, she’s a gallery director. When Brianna’s brother Troy (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, a scene-stealer) recounts to our duo the urban myth of the first film, early on, he inadvertently sets off a series of events that lead to – well, you can probably guess. Let’s just say, bad things happen.
Candyman is a loving reimagining of a cult classic. As a standard horror movie, it’s more disturbing than scary. The hardest scenes to watch (and I’ve seen it twice) don’t involve typical jump scares, but Cronenbergian body revulsion. The fright found here, as with Peele’s incredible Get Out, is often mundane, ripped from America’s actual past and present. And yet, this is also a conventional ghost story. These two competing terrors don’t always harmonize, but when they do, Candyman buzzes with vitality and menace.
Photo courtesy of Universal Studios
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