Candyman 3: Day of the Dead

Caroline McKeever (Donna E’Errico) has been haunted by some nightmares recently, where she’s stalked by the famous slasher villain known as Candyman – or Daniel Robaitaille (Tony Todd), her great great grandfather, a tall black man, historically damaged and murdered for having a relationship with a white woman (during the Civil War times), now called in supernatural form by saying his name five times into a mirror. Mike Massie said in his review, “Curiously, his arrival isn’t utilized as a means of vengeance, like Pumpkinhead; instead he tends to torment his caller, demand their soul in the afterlife, and cruelly frame them for his inevitable slaying spree.” “Sweets to the sweet.”

With the Day of the Dead festival coming (a nice thematic continuation from the last film’s Mardi Gras setting), Caroline prepares for a show of her artwork at Miguel Velasco’s (Mark Adair-Rios) art gallery near Boyle Heights in Los Angeles. The subject is, you guessed it, Candyman. Caroline wants to honor the real man, a talented painter, but Miguel only wants to utilize the urban legends, advertising the violent news of torture and death to get larger audiences of potential customers. He even hires an actor, David de la Paz, played by Nick Corri, to scare guests at the beginning.

“Believe in me!” After Caroline is insisted on repeating “Candyman” into a mirror five times, she expectedly walks down a dark alley alone, going into an abandoned subway where a figure of the real Candyman appears. Shortly thereafter, murders start happening – and since the victims are all related in some way to Caroline, she becomes the main suspect, pointed at by aggressive, racist Detective Samuel Kraft, played by Wade Andrew Williams.

“That’s it. I’m gettin’ you some help.” In the 1999 sequel to the franchise, “Candyman 3: Day of the Dead,” practically every form of creativity is gone. Massie noted, “No longer are there any deeper subtexts, thought-provoking moral quandaries, amusing motivations for character interactions, or the moving music by Philip Glass. Instead, this film is merely a low-budget, pre-sold-concept slasher, fueled by violence and nudity (D’Errico appears bra-less during the majority of the runtime). The acting is mediocre, the creativity of death scenes and carnage is negligible, the special blood effects are generally unconvincing, and the bees are mostly CG (mixed with a few live, stunt bees). It also resorts heavily to cheap jump scares, plenty of screaming and crying, and poorly lit locales with flickering lights (whether they’re hallways or bathrooms or bars).”

You can tell from the beginning that the story doesn’t drive this sequel. It’s so repetitive in ideas and imagery that, like the last film, it’s as much a remake as it is a sequel. The characters may have changed, but they’re all counterparts. Massie said, “correspondingly, the locations have shifted, but they represent the same hunting grounds and arenas for hook-handed attacks seen many times before (slashed throats and gored torsos are the favorites here). This tedious exercise in unvarying repetition continuously struggles to justify its own existence.” Telling the same story repeatedly just doesn’t work at all in entertainment value. As if it’s not a difficult task to beat the original 1992 horror masterpiece. By the end, nothing new is given. Massie ended his review by saying, “Candyman’s capabilities and the solution to his curse are as ambiguous and ham-handed as ever, while the protagonists are equally as bland and uninspiring.”

As everyone can guess, this is easily the worst in the franchise. Why did they feel the need to keep making sequels to this and not make worthy sequels that followed the way the first one ended? This film was just a torture to watch and nothing was good in it at all. Don’t make the mistake to watch this on Max like I did because you will regret ever streaming this cinematic garbage.

Now that we have gotten these two horrible sequels out of the way, next week we’ll be finishing “Candyman Month” with the last film that actually redeemed the franchise.