The original Candyman film from 1992 was something of a dark horse when it came out. The ‘90s were known as the decade that horror died after the rampant success of the ‘80s. It was a genre that was “no longer cool” (for whatever reason), so you had a lot of horror franchises trying new things and getting very meta to stand out and be different. Candyman, however, was a very simple horror story with a script penned by Clive Barker. It was just about a young woman who was working on her thesis in the slums of Chicago with the titular Candyman as the subject. She starts seeing him in random places, people start dying, and it’s a spooky time. This modern sequel with the same name has a script that was co-written by Jordon Peele and continues from where the first film ended in some ways. In other ways, it goes in other directions entirely.

Pros

Interesting camera angles and shots
Creepy scenes involving the Candyman in mirrors and peripherals
Shadow puppet scenes

Cons

Needlessly convoluted plot
Pacing is real slow
Tony Todd is only in the movie for the briefest of moments

Plot & Thoughts

Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is an aspiring artist who grew up in the dilapidated Chicago slums of the original Candyman film. He’s since moved into a high-rise apartment that has replaced some of the buildings as part of the gentrification process that has happened. He has a girlfriend and a group of friends who are all supportive of his art, even if they’re not as enthusiastic as he is. In a chance encounter, Anthony learns about the Candyman legend which inspires him for his next wave of style. As he gets more and more involved in his artistic process, he starts to experience a strain on his sanity as well as a skin condition set on by a bee sting. Likewise, as more people see his art and talk about it, the legend of the Candyman starts to make the rounds in the neighborhood again. People start saying his name five times in front of mirrors, to summon him as a game of Chicken to find out if he’ll actually kill you.

A small disclaimer up front: I have not seen any other of the films in the franchise aside from the original, so I’m not sure where the plots of those films may overlap with this one. For the most part, I think you can ignore the other movies and you won’t necessarily be lost in this sequel as a result. Why this is a sequel and yet it has the same name as the original, I do not know. They must have taken a page out of the book from the filmmakers of The Thing from 2011 or Halloween from 2018. I think I’m just going to start calling them Dequels, with the D for dumb. Regardless, the only film that you would need to see before this one is the original and that is partially because the ending of that movie is heavily referenced in this film and ties directly into the plot surrounding Anthony.

The best part of this movie is how it looks. Perhaps my favorite thing about this movie is the use of small shadow puppets to tell some of the story, to add to the fairy tale nature of Candyman. It’s stylish, cool, and reminiscent of the legend of the Deathly Hallows in the final Harry Potter films. In fact, most of how this movie looks is pretty cool. The art direction and the way everything is shot really add to the experience and make it a beautiful horror film.

All that being said, I don’t think this dequel is very good, with the main issue I have sitting firmly in the plot of the movie. Nothing really significant happens to Anthony until the end. Sure, people are dying from summoning the Candyman, but a fair amount of the victims are not necessarily connected to him. It slowly turns into a movie about someone becoming the new Candyman and taking his place, much like the original film. However, the original had significant moments in the protagonist’s life. Her friend was killed, she was imprisoned for it, and the Candyman himself, played by Tony Todd, was more prevalent in how he haunted her. It moved the plot along and it felt like things were happening. The Candyman of this movie just feels like a plot device hanging around in the background. As Anthony’s sanity is pushed to the test, and the legend of the Candyman becomes more powerful, we see some horrific visions and memories, but I don’t feel like anything is progressing. As a result, when the ending happened, it felt like it came out of nowhere; I just shrugged my shoulders and accepted it.

The movie has its moments when things are creepy, don’t get me wrong. It definitely leans more into the psychological horror in the moments when following Anthony around, while the rest of the cast is picked off by the evil specter. The way things are shot and the use of color add to that psychological tension, similar to Vertigo. However, I never really felt attached to any of the characters other than Anthony, so I just wasn’t really that interested in what was happening to everyone else. Since some of them were part of the “art” world, I was reminded of the film Velvet Buzzsaw and how that movie did its best to make you dislike each character before they died. If that had really been the case here, maybe I could recall more of the movie.

TL;DR

Candyman of 2021 is a pretty, competently-shot, forgettable film. The pace of the film suffers from the fact that the Candyman is barely more than background decoration in his own movie and nothing really significant happens to the protagonist until the last act. There are some creepy moments and gore for some horror fans to enjoy. I just don’t think it’s a very interesting movie.

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