A new Candyman reconsiders the bogeyman
Nia DaCosta's thoughtful reboot of the horror classic is almost too stuffed with ideas
Film Reviews Candyman
At a posh Chicago gallery, artist Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) stands before his piece, a tribute to the urban legend of Candyman, over-explaining the work’s intent to a critic trying to quietly regard it. His insights are visibly irritating her and hindering her ability to engage with the piece. It’s a faux pas that speaks to the main misstep of this reboot from director Nia DaCosta and her cowriters, Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld: a neo-Candyman overstuffed with numerous relevant springboards for discussion, often at the expense of sustained dread.
The movie is a direct sequel to Bernard Rose’s 1992 film of the same name, which was itself adapted from Clive Barker’s short story “The Forbidden.” As in the original, Chicago’s Cabrini-Green homes has its own bogeyman, sustained by word of mouth: The Candyman, a towering killer with a hook for a hand and a hive of bees swarming around him, who hacks and slashes through any who dare speak his name five times into a mirror. Anthony, who lives in a highly gentrified condo with his girlfriend, gallery director Brianna (Teyonah Parris), becomes acquainted with the legend while trying to break through his creative block. When a Cabrini local recounts the story of the Candyman to him, the artist is thrown down a rabbit hole of violent histories, which the film inventively illustrates through shadow puppet shows (including one that essentially recaps the events of the first movie).
DaCosta and company have thought on those histories, but they’re far more interested in yours. The script is rich with social and cultural prompts, sometimes stuffed into the narrative, as when Anthony drunkenly outs an art dealer as a sexual predator. (The subject isn’t touched upon again). The main one, concerning the stain of racial torment marking generations of Black citizens, is complex enough to start the intended conversations, and to bestow hefty replay value on Candyman. Indeed, the film’s website offers tandem curriculum resources for educators—this story is more about asking questions than providing tidy answers. It’s an expansive subject, one that filmmakers often oversimplify; when you try to tackle race from the surface without looking at how it intersects with all other elements of society, you get Green Book. To her credit, DaCosta keeps the conversation as messy as the innate violence of the Black experience, opening up intersecting threads on how Black art brushes up against commerce (“They love what we make, but not us,” one character observes) while serving as a testimonial source of power across generations, unpacking the cyclical trauma that parents share with their children. “Candyman,” grunts old-timer William Burke (Colman Domingo), “is how we deal with the fact that this is happening, that it’s still happening.”
With all these ideas buzzing around the narrative like wasps, it’s easy to fall out of step with the film’s energy. When a white dealer responds to Anthony’s pitch on gentrification in a way that betrays his desire to turn Black struggles into consumable product, it sure seems like DaCosta is encouraging engagement and rumination. But only sometimes. Other times, we’re watching a slasher movie, or a cheeky Velvet Buzzsaw commentary on art consumption. Candyman can be each of these things, but its various interests—the sheer volume of injustice to sift through and structures to interrogate—cry out for the extra space of a TV series. At mere feature length, the sweets are too sweet.
When the scares of this slasher variation do arrive, Candyman can be quite effective. DaCosta instinctively keeps both audience and legend at arm’s length, occluding kills by focal length and abstracting them into slivers of light under a door or a red-splattered movement across a window you have to squint to catch. The reflective mood flip-flops with requisite carnage, and while the true nature of Candyman has changed, horror fans who come for blood will get it by the bucket. The jokes are applied with intent and purpose; the funniest smash-cut gag of 2021 comes after a Black character asks who would be foolish enough to do the Candyman prompt for fun, just before a white girl traipses down a hallway to her doom. It’s a throwaway goof until DaCosta sees the concept through to interesting places in the film’s final act. One of the pros of bringing diverse experiences and perspectives behind the lens is that it yields culturally unique takes on common themes. Where Bernard Rose spoke on white anxieties and the image of the scary Black man in 1992, DaCosta expands the conversation, relocating the horror from one man to the many structures that foment brutality upon the Black populace.
“Say his name” isn’t just a clever marketing ploy. The film applies the expression with purpose, and mirrors it through craft. Cinematographer John Guleserian’s disciplined lens holds the players on each stage, presenting them with their own reverent portrait as if to immortalize them on the screen. Names of Black men in Cabrini’s history cut down by white apparatuses get their own brief but insistent eulogies, a more somber version of Spike Lee’s pop activism. As those same apparatuses attempt to write another Black man’s story for him and create yet another bogeyman to fear and revile, testifying on their behalf becomes not just necessary but empowering. That power comes through in the performances, most notably the tremulous resolve of Vanessa Williams, reprising her role from the original, and the gravity Domingo brings to his weary, growling lines. Meanwhile, Abdul-Mateen II tackles his starring role with the right balance of intensity and grace, aiming not to top Tony Todd’s iconic turn as the hook-handed killer but to complement it with the same stoic command of the screen he offered in Netflix’s The Get Down and HBO’s Watchmen, another genre project with big thoughts on the Black experience. The Candyman of 2021 represents more than he did three decades ago—indeed, more than a 91-minute movie can adequately explore. But there are worse crimes for a movie to commit than having too many ideas.
107 Comments
Still stoked.
I watched the original version of this movie in late teens, and then had to sleep on my brothers bedroom floor because I was too scared to sleep alone. I am praying that Tony Todd makes some kind of appearance or cameo in this film, because it seems wrong to make this movie without him in it somewhere.
I know it’s just a film but even then and even though it’s been 30 or more years since I saw it, there’s still no way I’m saying you know what in front of a mirror even once, never mind five times.
I’m pretty sure you couldn’t pay me enough to say it five times in a mirror (I say “pretty sure” because maybe I would do it for like $1,000,000)
When I said “Candyman” five times in front of a mirror, Sammy Davis, Jr. appeared and performed.Is that how it works? (When I said “Bloody Mary” three times in front of a mirror, I somehow ended up at brunch with my sisters.)
Thank goodness you bolded that platinum humour.
Better him than Dean Corll.
Don’t talk that way about my man Deon Cole.
Sorry if I’m thick, but do either movie explain why the Urban Legend is called Candyman? I thought he was a slave left to die from bee stings (obviously I haven’t seen the original). I guess Mr. Hook or Beeman don’t have the same ring, but I don’t see the connection.Also, was the first movie set in Chicago? For some reason I thought it took place in a Southern city.
His killers use honey to attract the bees. Since he’s covered in sweet stuff that tastes like candy, a little girl within the lynch mob declares him “Candyman”.
Yes, the first movie also took place in Chicago. As for the Candyman thing, I think it’s a reference to the fact that they slathered him with honey to attract the bees.
Also, was the first movie set in Chicago? Yup. Which is kinda weird, when you think about it. It’s also largely set in and around Cabrini-Green, which was torn down and is now ultra-gentrified stupid-looking condos.
Where did the (largely) African-American population of the former Cabrini-Green projects come from though? The American South. The “Great Migration” of Blacks from the South in the early-mid 20th century brought them to Chicago and other northern cities, and with them their traditions. Why not their monsters as well?
Well, as others have pointed out, he was a child of a slave who lived in Chicago and was lynched for having a child with a white woman. Which is absolutely not how I remember the legend from the movie. But still, it makes a lot more sense.
Plus, especially in ‘92, the setting made a hell of a lot of sense, since Cabrini-Green was an epicenter of poverty, crime, and neglect that was also just a few blocks away from some of the wealthiest parts of Chicago. (I also remember a bit about how the Cabrini-Green high-rises were identical in design to the wealthy high-rises nearby. I have no idea if that’s actually true, but if it is it makes that setting even more appropriate where the poverty of Cabrini-Green is a mirror reflection of the wealth of River North and the Gold Coast.
C-G fell apart largely due to neglect (elevators broke and weren’t fixed by the city, they stopped collecting trash so it filled the chutes). Also, an interesting commentary on racism and classism is that the original plan was to have metal numbers put on the buildings. But they opted for more-expensive spray paint because it “looked cheaper.”
It’s not that weird that the film is set in Chicago if you recall that the original short story was set in a Liverpool housing project. America has a bigger film market, so it was transplanted there, and Chicago serves as an equivalent.
1. He was called Candyman because he gave out candy in life. When razor blades turned up in some candy, he was blamed and lynched, only for the blades to continue after his death—he was innocent.2. Yes, it was set in Chicago.
Wasn’t the Candyman a wealthy artist who was lynched when he got involved in an interracial relationship? I don’t remember anything about razor blades, but maybe that was something they established in the original short story or the later films.I always assumed the nickname was based on the fact that he was killed by being smeared with honey so he’d be stung to death by bees—that is, because his murderers “candied” him.But his origin story was always meant to be somewhat vague, as befits an urban legend. I was always amused by the detail that the murderers “chased Candyman through the town to Cabrini Green,” as if the Frances Cabrini Rowhouses and William Green Homes were built on the former site of some public square called Cabrini Green.Or we meant to think that the Candyman was killed in some other location called Cabrini Green, and only the coincidental similarity in the names caused him to haunt the Chicago housing projects?
You are correct. In the movies, he was lynched because he had a child with a white woman. He was called Candyman because of the honey poured on him. I have no idea what that person is talking about regarding handing and out candy or razors. It’s definitely not from the short story. He has no backstory in the short story, he’s basically just the bogeyman.
I think there was a rumor about someone handing out candy with razor blades – it’s been awhile since I’ve watched the original film, but I think a kid at the park mentions the candy to Helen. Whether it was directly related to Candyman was always a bit vague. Helen definitely does find candy with razor blades in an apartment though. But, yeah, his name came from the honey part of his backstory.
You actually don’t find out the origin story until the sequel (which I watched because, you know, I wasn’t terrified enough by the first movie). You’re correct- he was a wealthy artist who was in love with a white women; he’s lynched by the townspeople who, I’m pretty sure, cut off his arm before covering him in honey and letting the bees at him and chanting “C*******n” (nope, won’t even type the word). Someone hands him a mirror so he can look at what they’ve done to him, and he says “C*******n” into the mirror before he dies, hence the legend/curse.
The origin story is actually told in the original film (during the dinner scene with the other professors, I think). The sequel is where we learn the name Daniel Robitaille.
That is not true at all. He was lynched because he had a child with a white woman. He was called Candyman because his body was covered in honey.
I misremembered based on the trailer. Shows what I know running my big fat stupid mouth.
Yeah, how dare you! I’ve certainly never done that 👀
Your description sounds like it would be a rad depiction of that moment in the 90s (late 80s?) when our parents told us not to trick or treat because of razor in candy.
Candy with razor blades are in the original. It’s just not where his name came from and I don’t think it was ever determined if the candy was directly tied to Candyman. I think it was supposed to be a red herring.
In the movie he got lynched for being in a relationship with a white woman.
He’s not a slave. He’s the child of slave who moved to Chicago to work as a painter and got lynched there. Northern cities had plenty of their own racism.
The second movie was in New Orleans, and overlapped with Mardi Gras. The first was in Chicago, though.
Beemanthis will be the Asylum Films version.
The only “Beeman” we need is a spin-off of “The Americans”.
The original short story by Clive Barker took place in a housing development in the UK, their version of the projects which was why when it was adapted into a movie version they used the most well known housing projects of that time Cabrini Green, too many people get caught up in the origin of the character which was the focal point of it’s lesser sequel Candy Man farewell to the Flesh, which took place in New Orleans. But if you go back to the source material and even the first movie Candy Man wasn’t really a vengeful spirit he was a Tulpa an urban legend brought to life, the story of who he was in life or even if he existed mattered less than the belief the residents of Cabrini Green had in him as a bogey man. Even the story line of the first movie was focused more on the various stories the people told, from the children living in the housing projects to the drug dealer using the legend as an identity. Candy Man isn’t the ghost of a lynched man but the embodiment of a people’s shared trauma given life by their belief. It was also a statement on the arrogance of the privileged people who played with those belief’s and used them for their own gain. So to reference an earlier post in this thread the original story was always woke.
It should also be mentioned that, since this is a direct sequel to the original, it’s pulling Halloween 2018 and establishing a new canon. And since all of the backstory with the interracial relationship and the honey and whatnot occurred in part 2 … poof.
Maybe you’re thinking about the ‘95 sequel? They retconned a lot of stuff in it and set it in New Orleans instead of Chicago.
I really disliked Velvet Buzzsaw and its invocation here, for a movie I was really looking forward to, is so disheartening.
Oh man I wanted to love it. And I had managed to completely forget about it until now…
Having now seen the movie the Velvet Buzzsaw comparison is dispiritingly apt. This is not a good movie.
Bogeyman. Afraid of a par score
It seems interesting, certainly, but I hate it when movies want to be thinkpieced about more than they want to be watched.
Yeah, having additional material for educators on the website is a little weird for an R-rated movie.
People teach high school seniors too….
Yeah, I didn’t think of the American school system. In my country (when I was in Year 12 anyway), you graduated at 17. I was halfway through my first year of university before I could attend an R-rated film unaccompanied.
I mean, I graduated at 17 in the US as well. We just needed parental permission to see the movies. At least when I was in school.
And college.
We watched Glory in my 11th grade AP US History class. We watched the original Halloween in my 12th grade AP English class during a classical horror period of study. Not sure how you could think there’s a downside to being proactive in offering these kinds of materials just in case, especially when it could be an excellent way to frame issues to a younger audience who might not otherwise care about the Black experience.
I’d be really interested to see the supplemental materials that were provided to my eight grade math teacher when he decided to screen the first Austin Powers movie for us in class.
Nah.“Educational” movies are also aimed at adults as much as teenagers or children. Stuff like Schindler’s List or the like.When shown to kids, there’s usually an edited version, or they make the kids get a permission slip from their parents. I saw Schindler’s List in high school. With the nudity unedited, iirc.
At this rate, we’ll never get to see Candyman and the Ice Cream Man team up to vanquish The Dentist.
Ahahahahaha, but they did not count on The Dentist receiving help from Dr. Giggles.
Soooooooo brave
Lordt, Teyonah Parris is just TOO DAMN GORGEOUS.
Huh, Maxim still a thing?
I’ll take me some Teyonah through any medium.
Hey, I just read those articles for the pictures!
Oh my good god damn.
I didn’t need another celebrity crush, but here we are.
Chi-Raq overall was a mess of a movie (seriously, from scene to scene it can go from Spike at the top of his game to completely embarrassing for everyone involved), but Teyonah helped keep me on board even during the low points.
Thighs for days…
Okay, so how does Cabrini-Green have its own boogeyman when the last of the Cabrini-Green high rises was torn down in 2011?
Why would the highrises being torn down get rid of the boogeyman? Might it just as easily further enrage him?
Go build a house on a Native American burial ground and see how that turns out for you.
I imagine there would be trouble… but not from spirits. Unless you were Jo Beth Williams.
(it turns out like the USA)
In the sequel, he goes up against the ghost of a Karen who moved in to one of the condos, but killed herself after using the n-word and going viral on Youtube.
Well I’m finally breaking my pandemic theater policy because Tony Todd will be at a screening of this really close to me.
Totally worth it, really.
Can’t wait to see this.If it’s a sequel, I wonder if Helen will show up (besides the shadow play mentioned above)?
Last I heard (which was admittedly a while ago), the character had been recast (so not Virginia Madsen).
Woke Candyman.Sounds like shit.
I mean the original was about cultural colonization and appropriation of myths (even going back to the original short story, though that was more focused on class than race.)
I take it you haven’t seen the original in a while.
Bad racist take? Check.Oblivious to message of original? Check.No replies to any posts? Check.We have a troll here my friend (responding to you because I prefer not to acknowledge the OP more than necessary).
Always been woke astronaut meme.
Wait to you hear what Rage Against the Machine is all about.
“Fuck you, I won’t do what ya told me, MOM!!!!”
Are you implying that this line wasn’t aimed at our suburb-dwelling parents who just wanted us to take out the damn garbage without having to ask us twenty-five times??
You didn’t exactly pay attention to the first one, did you?
Clive Barker would hate you.
Let me guess, you have a problem with politics “suddenly” being a part of Star Trek & Watchmen too, right?
boo fucking hoo
Racist sockpuppet account.Is actually shit.
did you not see the original? or are you as transparent of a troll as you seem
You’ve seen the original, no?
Literally what the first one was too bruh
The Candyman was tortured and murdered by white people—why does he terrorize innocent Black people?
I am concerned by the line that a movie this over-stuffed would be better as a series. We need less of movies becoming series that try to spin out every thread! Just a few months ago we had a Black-led high-budget fantasy-horror series about the lingering legacies of racism interwoven in American mythologies in Lovecraft Country, and it also tried very hard to be like, wide-ranging and intersectional and thoughtpiece-able – and it was a fucking mess! Trying to chase down all those threads meant its central metaphor got seriously muddled, it thoroughly undermined its attempts to say anything serious or re-orient these stories in empowering or intersectional ways (remember when michael k williams murders an indigenous intersex person and the show just kinda… forgets… and then he has his big drag celebration scene?) and it generally just took an interesting premise and then spun into the ground with it. Very occasionally a story is better as a tv series than as a movie, but mostly, these things work better when you kill your darlings, rip out the half-dozen doodly little threads that could make a good thinkpiece, and actually focus your story in the way the original Candyman movie was focused and vibrant and all of a piece with itself.
Them did it good tho!This movie was good in that Black trauma and the generational trauma around that isn’t easy to navigate, but some threads were visited very briefly. I think it was just a lot of really valid points raised in the film but you were trying to consider each perspective while moving scene to scene very quickly.
One of the fun things about a horror movie is the relationship between form and content. Horror movies tend to be short and kind of harsh, so using that form to tackle a heavy theme can lead to some internal tension. But that’s what I love about horror movies – they rarely have the time to become didactic, and they’ll drop everything when it’s time for some scary shit.
“cry out for the extra space of a TV series. At mere feature length, the sweets are too sweet.”Considering how most of the TV horror series have been in recent years, I prefer one movie over-stuffed with ideas to one season that’s padded or stretched and inconsistent.
My view is that horror works better in smaller units. Short stories, short films, segments within anthology films, episodic anthology series, and 90 minute features on the longer end. It’s harder to sustain fear of something over a longer period, and if the greatest fear is fear of the unknown, you don’t want to have enough time to reveal too much.
My view is that horror works better in smaller units.100% agreed. Short works can be scary and nasty and end on either a twist or a big “fuck you” to the audience (in a fun way). When it goes long, though, and the mysteries are all answered, the third act usually ends up as an action movie. And when it doesn’t you still kinda feel cheated, because you followed these characters all the way through the novel/movie just to see them lose. Long-form horror that finds an ending besides “yup, the scary monster thing wins and our protagonists are all dead” or “the good guys arm up and find a way to win” is hard to do.
The original Candyman pulled it of magnificently.
Which long-form horror had the “yup, the scary monster thing wins and our protagonists are all dead” ending? Second season of Hannibal doesn’t count, because of the third season.
I quite enjoyed the new Creepshow TV series, but that’s an anthology.
Oh, anthology format can be GREAT for horror. Short stories 20-60 minutes, get in get out, make your point if you have one. But that’s just reinforcing my point even more, because not only are they NOT full length seasons, they are usually even shorter than individual movies. Anthologies also mean that if you have a crappy story/director/cast/whatever that next time around could be better as one of more of those elements will likely change. Like, some of the Masters of Horror eps in the mid-00s were complete garbage, others still stick with me today. I wanna check out that new Creepshow too, maybe I will do a free trial for Shudder close to Halloween and try and watch all the exclusive stuff I want to see.
Yeah, I grimaced at that line. *glares in Haunting of Hill House’s direction*
Yeah, I’d prefer a movie with too many ideas over something too stretched out too.
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Agreed 100%. Horror movies generally follow the same structure, so the joy of a well made horror movie is in the director’s staging of the requisite setpieces and how they fill the spaces between them. This one has some very well staged setpieces (Candyman floating just above the ground is a nice touch), and the space between them is bursting with ruminations on Blackness. The formal structure of a 91-minute slasher movie is what makes the themes pop. I was a little ambivalent about the ending, since I wasn’t sure if watching the Candyman hook people should be quite that satisfying. But within the larger context of Black suffering and anger, I guess that last killing spree makes thematic sense. And goddamn was it satisfying.
Saying a movie is overstuffed with ideas is a polite way of saying that the movie is a complete mess.
No it isn’t. A good movie can still be overly concerned with thematic resonance.
Not at all.
The only thing that Peele has written, produced, or directed that isn’t overstuffed is actually “Get Out,” which is laser-focused and great. “Us,” “Twilight Zone, ” “Hunters,” “Candyman,” they’re all either overlong or a mess of competing ideas. I feel like Peele needs to write like a straight rom-com or something to reset himself.
Not thrilled to hear they turned one of the great horror/romance movies of all time into a graduate level discourse on how white people are bad. We get it…our ancestors have not always been the best. Can we have Tony Todd purring to some crazy broad while mangling her friends back now?
I saw this over the weekend and didn’t really care for it. Its not a scary film by any means and to me it tries way too hard to be a “movie with a message” instead of a great horror film. I firmly believe in equal rights and resolving the racial inequities of this country, but I don’t need to be constantly hit over the head with it even when I go to the movies. This just didn’t work for me and attempted to be several different things and in doing so became nothing. I left feeling essentially nothing after watching this.
“but I don’t need to be constantly hit over the head with it even when I go to the movies”girl if that ain’t privilege.
Interesting. Please explain how its priveledge. Its a popular word to say right now so please explain to me its meaning here.
Please explain how its priveledge. Its a popular word to say right now so please explain to me its meaning here.Because white people are the only people in this country who aren’t constantly “hit over the head” with racial injustice and inequality just by living their lives in America. We have the “privilege” of not thinking about it all the time. It’s possible for us to ignore it (some for their entire lives), where for non-whites it’s impossible to escape, even if they just want to go out for a carton of milk.
“Hit over the head” with racism isn’t even a metaphor most of the time.