Candyman is a current classic built on its original classic (1992). Smart and entertaining, it's what exciting cinema can be.
Candyman
“Candyman ain't a He. Candyman's the whole damn hive. If you're out here looking for Candyman, you ask me, stay away!” William Burke (Colman Domingo)
I hope you won’t stay away from this newly-classic horror film, Candyman, because it isn’t a traditional scare fest. Candyman has much to say while still entertaining in a highly-evolved genre.
With Jordan Peele as a writer and producer, Candyman has his Get-Out aesthetic, which attacked racism as a child of the slavery history, but having more rambunctious gore and less subtlety about the horrific heritage of white racial imperialism. Writer-director Nia DaCosta joins Peele and writer Win Rosenfeld to craft a not-so-subtle drama about the gentrification of Cabrini-Green project in Near-North Chicago as opposed to the decay depicted in 1992’s classic Candyman.
Gentrified Cabrini is peopled by Black buppies replacing white yuppies, artistic poseurs, and marauding white police. Amidst this modernized mayhem, Tony Todd’s hook-handed monster has returned, after presumed dead from immolation in the original’s grand-guignol bonfire. The filmmakers emphasize the durability of injustice against minorities and the poor—the Candyman is the avatar of revenge, himself turning over the mantle, or hook if you will, to a new generation of racial equalizers.
It's not difficult to feel this powerful contemporary thriller is also targeting contemporary anti-vax and anti-mask idiocy with the vigilante force of the Candyman. A classic work of art like this one can, of course, mean much to many at any time.
Although my account so far seems to be describing a heavy-duty revenge socio-drama, Candyman entertains in equal measure with the usual blood, gore, and scares.
Credit Cinematographer John Guleserian for the visual clash of splashy gentrification with the mess of bloody horror and art directors Jami Primer and Ines Rose replicating the contemporary glitz of a rehabbed Cabrini in the face of destructive elemental forces like the Candyman and white prejudice.
Emphasizing insidious artistry, DaCosta interjects such mesmerizing touches as shadow puppetry of stick figures to represent the mythic and inscrutable nature of urban legend, and allegorical bees to show the horror of unlicensed hatred begging for the justice of equality. Charismatic curator Brianna (Teyonah Parris) pushes the boundaries of savvy by demanding “the new, the now” while her brother Troy (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) narrates the macabre Candyman story. Newer is not necessarily better.
Meanwhile artist Anthony (a magnetic Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) researches Cabrini only to find the Candyman is waiting among the ruins. Helping him is Cabrini refugee William Burke, a laundromat owner with some figurative dirty laundry that changes things. His “didactic cliché” art show called “Say my Name” is a caution to anyone who knows the power of saying “Candyman.”
This new Candyman embraces the violence of the past in a modern attitude more comfortable with the ability of art playing a large part showing the cultural advances of people of color, rather than brutality. Let it be said, though, that white police are yet being depicted as violent justice carriers impervious to the advances in understanding equality of any color.
Candyman is rousing nectar for the mature family.
“Tell everyone!” exhorts the Candyman.
Candyman
Director: Nia DaCosta (The Marvels)
Screenplay: Jordan Peele (Get Out), Win Rosenfeld, DaCosta
Cast: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Aquaman), Teyonah Parris
Run Time: 1h 31m
Rating: R
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JohnDeSando62@gmail.com
