A horror movie that also aims to be a topical socio-political argument and an exercise in florid visual style, Nia DaCosta’s sequel to (or more properly reboot of) Bernard Rose’s 1992 Candyman, produced and co-written by Jordan Peele, has ambitions so grand that it ultimately stumbles over them, yet it is difficult to take your eyes off it.
The original film centered on investigations into the titular urban legend (Tony Todd), a murderous African-American bogeyman with a hook for a hand who could be summoned by repeating his name five times in front of a mirror. It was set at the notorious Cabrini-Green public housing project on Chicago’s Near North Side, since demolished; this one plays out in the same neighborhood in the present, when the area has been gentrified.
Painter Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) lives there in an elegant high-rise apartment with girlfriend Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris), a gallery director. He becomes obsessed with the legend and creates a piece titled “Say My Name,” a multi-mirrored cabinet with horrific paintings inside, which is installed in Brianna’s latest exhibition. Snooty critic Finley Stephens (Rebecca Spence) initially dismisses it but reconsiders after two people are brutally murdered in front of it following the opening night party.
Shortly afterward, Stephens is killed following an interview with McCoy, and a quartet of high school mean girls (one of whom had visited the exhibition) are slaughtered in a campus restroom when they foolishly repeat the invocation. Meanwhile, Anthony is undergoing a frightening change. While investigating the Cabrini grounds, he was stung by a bee—a part of the Candyman mythology—and sores begin to cover his body. He also meets William Burke (Colman Domingo), a longtime resident who encountered Candyman as a boy and knows the legend’s broader significance. Anthony also learns that he himself has an important connection to Cabrini-Green and the 1992 investigation of the legend. Ultimately, he undergoes a transformation that embodies Candyman’s role as an avenger of injustice.
Candyman does not stint on blood and gore, but the murders are staged in arty, indirect style, and DaCosta’s preference for suggestion over gruesome directness is also seen in the use of shadow puppets in silhouette to recount the origin story of Candyman, the events of 1992, and the exploitation of African-Americans throughout U.S history. The ending goes somewhat awry in trying to tie all these elements into a tidy package while escalating the fright quotient, but the film remains an extremely stylish resuscitation of an old horror franchise with something beyond mere scares on its mind. Recommended.