Candyman (2021)

“Candyman,” released in 2021, has a violent horror social commentary shown by impressive newcomer Nia DaCosta. She directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld. The sequel is worth it to the 1992 original, making for a great double feature.

A ghost story has haunted Chicago’s Cabrini Green for many years. Daniel Robitaille, a brief cameo by Tony Todd, is the real name of the urban legend that scares the residents. Say his name five times in a mirror and he will appear, but it will be the last thing his prey sees. The renovation of Cabrini Green has made for an updated Cabrini Green.

Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is an artist who lives with his girlfriend Brianna (Teyonah Parris). When he is told about the legend of Candyman, he becomes inspired to include it into his art. However, Anthony soon finds out that the scary stories of the supernatural are very true. He tries to balance his art career, a relationship, and the fear brought on by the Candyman.

Jeff Nelson said in his review, “Candyman directly links to the first installment and doubles down on the social commentary. Gentrification is a major theme that runs throughout the film. As a result, Cabrini Green looks very different from how it did in the first film. The urban legend of Candyman sticks in the minds of the longtime residents, but his story is only one of many horrors of injustice that have taken place in these streets.”

Nelson continued, “In turn, DaCosta’s story takes Candyman’s mythos to the next level.” The racist attacks on members of the community are the real fear. Candyman is still a very scary slasher, but there’s also focus on those who made him who he became. He’s to be feared, but the hatred and violence targeted towards people of color is the actual constant threat.

However, DaCosta is still making a slasher movie. There’s a body count with different levels of violence throughout the movie. Nelson noted, “Candyman hooks, rips, and disembowels his victims, but most of it isn’t shown directly. There are plenty of goopy gore effects, although DaCosta approaches the carnage through other human senses. The audio depicts most of the violence, as she crafts a variety of ways to deliver violence that isn’t gratuitous.” “Candyman” isn’t about the violence, but rather a look at who it’s being done to and why.

DaCosta has proven herself to be one to watch. She visually captures the story in a way that is completely unique and consistently worth it for the eyes. There are few nice mirror tricks that make for memorable moments. Robert A.A. Lowe’s score is amazing, as it perfectly captures the essence of both the character and the movie of “Candyman.”

Nelson said, “However, the movie lacks many scares, but rather holds a mirror up to society. It references an abundance of horror tropes, which are generally for comedic effect. The body horror element feels like an abandoned piece of the plot that isn’t entirely addressed. The third act takes a strange turn that doesn’t fit tonally fit with the rest of the movie, although it does manage to drive its point home.”

Aside from some flaws, “Candyman” is a good sequel to the 1992 original. It’s well-paced and it builds on the franchise’s mythology in a great way. Nelson said, “Some of the social commentary is a bit heavy-handed, although it’s further proof that the horror genre is a wonderful vehicle for dissecting complex social issues.” DaCosta worked on “The Marvels,” but we’ll see if she returns to horror in the future.

This is the only good sequel in the franchise. If you saw the first one, skip the other two and go straight to this one. You will be satisfied when seeing this. It will make you remember what made the first movie so scary and worth seeing. This is currently streaming on Prime so you can check it out on there. I was scared when I saw this, especially with the murders and with the bees. Aside from the bees possibly being CGI, it was a scary moment. Check it out and be scared.

Thank you for joining in on “Candyman Month.” I hope all of you enjoyed it, but we’re not done with “Halloween Month.” There will be a few more reviews coming up, so stay tuned. Sorry for the late posting. I ended up falling asleep because I was so tired after coming home from work.

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.

Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh

We now come to the 1995 bad Bill Condon sequel to one of the scariest horror movies ever made. “Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh” has more of the tragic horror icon with a hook for a hand. Once a slave who was lynched for having an affair with a white woman, he appears for murder every time someone says his name five times in a mirror.

A direct sequel to the first film, a local author (Michael Culkin) is murdered by Candyman (Tony Todd) in a bar bathroom, and his attacker, Ethan Tennant (William O’Leary), the son of a Candyman victim (Michael Bergeron) is blamed. His sister, Annie Tarrant, played by Kelly Rowan, is a normal school teacher in New Orleans who is insistent that he didn’t commit the murder, but Ethan just wants to take the blame for Candyman. Felix Vasquez said in his review, “Convinced otherwise, she begins investigating, despite his objections, and unfolds a humongous mystery that I wish were interesting.” For some reason, more of the originals of Candyman are revealed, as he’s given a tragic story, as well as a reason for being called from the mirror. You would think he’d only really murder the people that call him from the mirror but sure enough he just needs to be called by anyone at any time even playfully.

Vasquez said, “The Cenobites needed a puzzle solved.” Demons needed a book to be read. Deadites needed an incantation. But you could be somewhere, say his name five times, and sure enough he’ll appear and murder viciously. There’s just something that explains the character where he can come around to kill you at any time. Sure enough, despite being warned about the Candyman, and knowing about the mysterious hook-based murders, Annie begins putting herself in danger. She finds changes to the Candyman, she enters into dark isolated mansions, and all just because of a guess. Even when it becomes evident that the Candyman is real, Kelly Rowan’s performance is fine, but the rest of the movie drags with a slow pacing that completely removes any mystery that the writer tries to invoke.

Vasquez admitted, “Granted Tony Todd’s performance is fantastic as always, but rather than uncover Annie’s past, I just wanted the movie to get to the darn point, and figure out what Candyman wanted with her and her mother (Veronica Cartwright).”

I cannot believe that they would make a sequel that would be so awful. The way they ended the first movie, I would have been happy with the direction it could have gone in, but they threw that out the window. This sequel is just terrible. Currently, it is streaming on Max, but do not make the mistake of seeing it because you will be questioning the movie every minute. If you loved the first movie, then don’t see this one at all.

Next week we will be continuing the torture by looking at a worse sequel in “Candyman Month.”

Candyman (1992)

For this year’s “Halloween Month,” I will be looking at a franchise that I first heard from James Rolfe when he did “Monster Madness” a few years back, the “Candyman” franchise. Let’s get started with the first in the franchise, “Candyman,” released in 1992.

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.