Teyonah Parris and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II explore the Candyman's terrifying origin story in eerie trailer
Nia DaCosta and Jordan Peele update the origin story of the ill-fated ghost killer with a deadly hook for a hand in the new adaptation
Film News Candyman
Jordan Peele heard that someone was trying to step on his turf and decided to show them how Black horror’s really done with the new trailer for Nia DaCosta’s Candyman, starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Watchmen, The Get Down). Peele wrote the screenplay alongside Win Rosenfeld and DaCosta.
Mixing folklore, horror, and the Black experience, Candyman follows visual artist Anthony McCoy (Abdul-Mateen II) and his partner Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris; If Beale Street Could Talk, WandaVision). The pair move into a luxury loft condo in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green, a gentrified neighborhood historically comprised of project housing. After hearing about the ghost story about a ruthless killer with a hook for a hand, McCoy begins to chase down the story’s origins in an effort to fuel his art, finding out for himself what happens when you say “Candyman” five times in the mirror. Both the neighborhood and Anthony’s psyche begin to unravel as the killer returns, leaving a trail of bodies behind him.
Jordan Peele revived the Black horror genre with films such as Get Out (2017) and Us (2019), and he’s spurred other storytellers to share their own takes on the genre in films such as Antebellum starring Janelle Monae (2020), Them (2021), and the television series Lovecraft Country (2020), which was created under Peele’s production studio Monkeypaw. DaCosta’s recent work includes The Marvels and Little Woods. Actor Tony Todd, who played the Daniel Robitaille/Candyman in the original adaptation, is reviving his iconic role once again for DaCosta’s version.
In Candyman, Peele, Rosenfield, and DaCosta rewrite the origin story first told in the 1992 adaptation directed by Bernard Rose. Rose based his film on Clive Barker’s short story “The Forbidden,” which follows a white grad student who accidentally revives Candyman, who in this version is the ghost of an artist who was murdered for having a relationship with the daughter of a wealthy white man. The new version centers around a Black man who was wrongfully murdered after being accused on giving out candy with razor blades in them to children, mirroring ongoing issues with police brutality again Black people in America.
Candyman will be released in theaters on August 27.
39 Comments
man candy.
I mean . . . .
Candyman’s terrifying originIs it nougat-related? Catastrophic gumdrop accident? Was his mother killed by maurauding gummi bears?
Actor Tony Todd, who played the Daniel Robitaille/Candyman in the original adaptation, is reviving his iconic role once again for DaCosta’s version.Nice one. Although I’d suggest Candyman isn’t as iconic/popular as other slashers (debatable, I know, don’t hurt me), Tony Todd’s definitely a case of “I can’t imagine anyone else in the role.”
Get Out has its merits and makes a statement, but US is a crappy mess that isn’t saved by its social message. Twilight Zone was decidedly hit or miss as well.This, however, looks amazing.
Us is fantastic. Give me a surreal apocalypse any day.
I liked Get Out as a metaphor, but I don’t love the subgenre of horror where an average person has to kill their way through a bunch of crazies. Us, on the other hand, runs on unfiltered dream-logic, and it’s glorious. Anytime it seems like it’s brushing up against something literal, it drifts back into its own self-contained craziness. It’s more like a 19th century Gothic story than a 21st century horror movie.
it felt like a dude going ‘okay, well they’re only going to let me get away with once, i’m GOING FOR IT’ and obviously that method is a little messy but what a glorious mess.
US would have been fantastic if only he’d left “the explanation” for the Tethered out (or made it more obvious that the explanation was speculation on Nyong’o’s character’s part and not necessarily fact). It was too much and pretty much the only thing in the movie that I thought was a misstep.
I understand. But with the way people talk about it it’s like the only scene they watched and nothing else mattered.
US scared the absolute shit out of me. It was filled with incredibly memorable images. The fact that you’re coming up in here only talking about these movies messages and statements tells me all I need to know about what you are actually trying to say here.
I mean, the images were memorable, but what I remember mostly is trying to figure out how Lupita Nyong’o was able to explain everything at the end. Or how exactly they were the people above and below were actually tethered. And what the rules of that tethering were, etc. Granted, it’s been a while, and I have no desire to see it again. I know I’m not the OP, but it’s possible to find this specific movie not great without saying anything more than just that.
Us is a movie where you really shouldn’t worry about the logic too much. It’d be like worrying who did the room decorating in the black lodge. If you’re stressing about logistics than you’re missing out on everything else the movie is doing.
Sure. If you don’t overlook wild internal consistencies that can’t be explained away, you’re doing it wrong. You’re using an argument usually advanced by fans of the Transformers movies.
The quality of Us in particular aside (I don’t think it’s a perfect film, nor do I think it’s a terrible one), this is a facile argument. People have perhaps said that Transformers is not a logical or well plotted movie. No one has -ever- said that this is because it is operating on dream logic in an artistically interesting manner. The latter is the claim the person you’re responding to is making about Us. Accusing them of being some kind of intellectual inferior who just likes dumb explosions is disingenuous.The fact is, some films and other works of art -do- eschew real-world “logic” in favor of something more impressionistic or emotion-based. The works of David Lynch exist and have ardent fans. This is fine. Some films are swiss-watch plotted and attempt to be meticulous about internal logic. Your Christopher Nolan joints (even the one -about- dreams, ironically). This is also fine. There is a vast continuum of arts in between those two points. And sometimes they are good and sometimes they suck and sometimes they’re somewhere in between, regardless of approach. But fetishizing “logic” as the only way to tell a story is cutting off an entire avenue of artistic approach, and that is very misguided.
No, a concept needs to be supported with in-world logic. I don’t know how you jumped to me stressing, but you’re doing the most to defend this movie! so you do you.
Just defending a movie I love from a common way I see to trash it. When so much of the movie runs on dream logic I just don’t understand overanalyzing it and going after it for not having air tight logic. Because if the movie really wanted to explain itself it could have introduced a mad scientists, or the government coming in or all manner of ways that would make the movie very boring.
Except Twin Peaks doesn’t end with BOB or Judy explaining the entire plot at the end of it, so…
but Twin Peaks does have entire episode that’s an origin story to Judy and Bob.
True, but it wasn’t during along, cheesy monologue
Okay, well sorry the movie didn’t work for you.
And actually it ended with the revelation about Lupita’s switch and an ambiguous shot of the Tethered fulfilling the prophecy of Hands Across America to a mysterious end.
Yeah, US’s “rules” make It Follows look smart. It’s just silly.
It Follows is smart
Your user name and comment are in perfect synchronicity.
Yep! I liked a movie you didn’t! Good call
This! The ending of Us is such a poorly executed mess it ruined the rest of the movie for me. “Villain explains entire plot in five minute monologue at the end of a movie” is straight up bad storytelling
So because we have a subjective difference of opinion about a movie, and because I referenced the fact that US has an undeniably strong social message, you’ve made some determinations about my character and about some hidden motives you believe I possessed in making my original comment?Touch grass.
I think I follow you… only liking one out of Jordan Peele’s three big projects, and looking forward to the new one, makes you racist is it? Thanks for the heads up I guess.
I think I follow you… only liking one out of Jordan Peele’s three big projects, and looking forward to the new one, makes you racist is it? Thanks for the heads up I guess.
I think I follow you… only liking one out of Jordan Peele’s three big projects, and looking forward to the new one, makes you racist is it? Thanks for the heads up I guess.
I think I follow you… only liking one out of Jordan Peele’s three big projects, and looking forward to the new one, makes you racist is it? Thanks for the heads up I guess.
Ooh, the razors in the candy is such a nice touch for we younger GenXers who were big fans of the original, since we were raised on the warnings of people trying to poison our Halloween candy.
This will probably be what gets me back to a movie theater.
“after being accused on giving out candy with razor blades in them to children”Well that… that sounds like shit, and %100 lessens the tragic and very true to life backstory of this character.That shit is literally embarrassing.Also, why the fuck does he have a hook for a hand in this version?Why the fuck are bees still present, like, at all? Was he a wu-tang fan?
Fuuuck this looks good. What an amazing cast and already some interesting looking visual imagery.
major props for resisting using a slowed-down echo-y version of the Sammy Davis song on the trailer.
I’m down for this but pretty weary, Us and Antebellum (both mentioned here) were just…not great movies, Antebellum especially.
Yeah, I was disappointed in both of them. Us made no sense, even within its own word, and Antebellum was just… completely misguided.