- Directed by Nia DaCosta
- Written by Jordan Peele, Win Rosenfeld, Nia DaCosta
- Stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlwzuZ9kOQU
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This lacks Tony Todd being prominent as Candyman, but they still make it work. It’s sort of a reboot and sort of a sequel. The script is pretty good with a good cast and an interesting direction. Cool puppetry and good music too.
Synopsis
We open on Cabrini-Greens in 1977. Little Billy carries his laundry to the laundry room. There’s a big paint spot on the wall that he thinks is creepy. He sees someone walk through the paint spot/hole in the wall. The man’s shadow has a hook for a hand. Credits roll.
Anthony is an artist, and his girlfriend is Brianna. Her brother Troy is there with his boyfriend Grady. Troy asks if they all want to hear a scary story. He tells the story of a white grad student named Helen who was doing research on Cabrini-Green. Then one day she just snapped and beheaded a Rottweiler. She left a trail of bodies behind her. Helen is said to have run into the big bonfire with a kidnapped baby, but the crowd rushed her and saved the child. Helen walked into the fire and burned to death. It’s an altered summary of the original film.
Anthony promises his manager Clive that he’s doing some art based on “The Projects” about racism. He goes there and takes a photo of an old church but notices a swarm of bees on the ground. He climbs a fence and goes into some deserted houses. He spots weird graffiti on the walls.
He meets William Burke, a man who still lives there. He says Helen was here looking for Candyman, and he thinks she found him. He was little Billy from the opening scene. There was a man named Sherman living in the projects who had a hook for a hand and always gave out candy to the kids. About a hundred cops killed the man on the spot; he was accused of putting razor blades in the candy. A few weeks after his death, he was proven innocent.
Anthony goes home and starts painting. He paints the murder of Sherman, which led to the legend of Candyman. The art show opens, and Anthony has some of his works located in a room behind a mirror, a homage to the original movie. The critic says it’s uninspired and he needs a day job. Anthony tells off Clive in front of the whole show, and Clive responds by saying that Anthony was only invited because Brianna begged him.
Clive and his girlfriend talk about Anthony later, and she talks about summoning the Candyman. She does, and she dies. Clive tries to run away, but something invisible to us kills him right there in the studio. Meanwhile, Anthony’s at home painting in a trance, but his hands are all bloody and burnt-looking.
Brianna dreams of her father, who jumped out of a window when she was little. Anthony goes to the university and asks about Helen’s work, and they give him a folder and a tape machine, where Helen explains her psychological theories. The mirrored elevator stops, and Anthony finds a piece of candy before spotting Candyman on the ceiling. Nothing’s really there.
The reviewer from the exhibition interviews Anthony. She’s much more interested in his work now. He says she’ll never understand his art unless she does the ritual in front of a mirror. Anthony starts picking at his scabbed-up hand and sees himself in the mirror as the Candyman, hook, bees, and all. When Anthony leaves, we see someone invisible kill the reviewer.
Brianna has a power dinner with several important art-world people when the news of the critic’s death comes in on their phones. Anthony runs to talk to William again, who says the Candyman story goes back to the 1890s and Daniel Robitaille, who was commissioned to paint a rich white man’s daughter. Things went south from there with the same origin story we heard in the 1992 film. “A story like that, pain like that—it lasts forever. That’s Candyman!”
Anthony tells Brianna that he thinks he brought back Candyman. She goes over to the mirror and starts saying it—until Anthony smashes all the mirrors to stop her. She goes to stay with her brother Troy.
Meanwhile, at high school, a girl who was at the exhibition dares a bunch of girls in the restroom to summon him as a group. Four girls all say the name five times. This goes about how you’d expect.
Anthony’s whole arm and part of his face now look burnt and rotten. He goes home to talk to his mother about where he was born; she knows about Candyman. She admits that he was the baby kidnapped by Helen in the 1992 film. Everyone blamed Helen, but she knew who really did it. “He chose you to be one of his victims. He wanted you to burn in that fire.”
Brianna goes looking for Anthony and ends up at the laundromat where William works. She gets locked in the back room, and someone grabs her from behind. Yes, it’s William, and he takes her to a creepy church with some strange artwork on the wall. Anthony is there, and he’s changing. William saws off Anthony’s hand and puts a hook instead; Anthony just sits there and tolerates it. William is obviously insane, but the jury’s still out on Anthony.
Brianna stabs William to death with a pen, and then Anthony comes in and passes out. The police arrive, and they shoot… Anthony. The cop comes out to talk to Brianna in the police car and gives her a choice: back up the cop’s story or tell what really happened. She asks to see herself in the mirror. The cop moves the car mirror, and she says the name five times, summoning the monster.
Suddenly, a bloody cop comes out of the building, and the others start shooting as Candyman kills all of them in the bloodiest way possible. As the bees disperse, we see that he’s got his old face back again. Candyman is reborn!
Commentary
The Cabrini-Green towers, where the original film was set, had been demolished, and replaced with high-rises since the first film was shot there. This story was switched to take place in the row houses, which were still standing. It’s sort of a reboot it’s sort of a sequel (yes, it’s a “requel”). The events of the first film are told as a sort of urban legend, but we see newspaper clippings that support it.
The shots of the city are really cool, and the soundtrack is quite good as well. The many uses of silhouette puppets are interesting as well (Be sure to watch the end credit sequence). There’s a social message here about cops being anti-black, and although it’s a little heavy-handed, it’s not necessarily unjustified.
Although it’s the shortest of the Candyman films, it felt a little stretch-out in place, but overall, it’s pretty good.