Budd Wilkins started his review by saying, “One of the
most significant alterations that writer-director Bernard Rose made to Clive
Barker’s short story “The Forbidden” when adapting it for the screen was the
switch in setting from a council estate in Thatcher-era Liverpool to the
Cabrini-Green housing project in early-1990s Chicago. This brings thorny issues
of both class and race into sharp focus.” Rose also changes the protagonist’s
location of academic review from the study of graffiti to the sources of urban
legends. “Candyman” thus clearly becomes a horror story about the power and
fascination of horror stories.
Wilkins said, “Rose adopts a slow-burn approach,
taking us through the researches of grad student Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen)
into the titular hook-handed bogeyman, who can only be summoned by repeating
his name five times in front of a mirror.” An early look of the Candyman legend
– but not of the man himself – turns out to be a story being told to Helen by
one of her informants, played by Ria Pavia. Another 40 minutes go by before
Candyman, played by Tony Todd, makes his first appearance. Wilkins notes, “This
deliberately incremental approach may put off viewers more accustomed to contemporary
techniques in pacing and editing, but it definitely pays dividends when it
comes to establishing an atmosphere of mounting dread.”
A tip from a university janitor (Sarina C. Grant)
takes Helen and her research partner (Kasi Lemmons) to the Cabrini-Green
projects, the location of all the real urban horrors. Rose is known to trace
some of the sources to poverty, the curse of drugs, and isolation from the
surrounding society. Several murders are connected to the Candyman, but it’s not
until Helen is attacked by a drug dealer calling himself the Candyman (Terrence
Riggins) that the police (Gilbert Lewis) take action.
In an interesting side note, it’s shown that the
apartment Helen shares with her professor husband (Xander Berkeley), was originally
meant for a housing project identical in layout to Cabrini-Green. However,
there weren’t the same public boundaries that separated it from Chicago’s rich
Gold Coast, so it was changed into condos instead. Wilkins said, “This doubling
between structures is just one instance of literal or figurative mirroring that
runs throughout the film.” Here going through the looking glass takes you into
the area of lore and legend.
Wilkins speculates, “One way of reading this
gratifyingly ambiguous film would have it that there’s no Candyman at all—that
his horrors are all taking place inside Helen’s increasingly disordered mind.
Sudden shifts in time and location could well represent fugue states. Murder
weapons have a peculiar way of finding themselves in Helen’s hands. Even the
scene where the Candyman intercedes to free Helen from her restraints in the
psychiatrist’s office could simply be a delusion on her part, where she somehow
manages to struggle free from shoddily fastened cuffs. The film thus teeters on
the threshold between what literary critic Tsvetan Todorov calls the uncanny
and the marvelous, the illusory and the actually occurring.” This gives a whole
new meaning to the writing on the wall in the final scene: “It was always you,
Helen.”
I have to agree with James when he says that “Candyman”
is a legitimately scary movie. All of the murders that Candyman does make you really
scared and cringe, especially with the bees involved. Also, when you see
everything that happens to Helen, you feel really sad for her. Because at
first, everyone is on her side and wants to help her, but when Candyman starts
murdering everyone around her and everyone that was once on her side turn
against her, you feel sad at how quickly everyone changes sides. I give this
movie a high recommendation. If you haven’t seen it, watch it on Peacock. This
film really fits the Halloween season.
Next week, we will be looking at the first sequel in
the franchise in “Candyman Month.” Sorry for the late posting. I didn’t notice
that I had fallen asleep from being so tired from work.
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