CANDYMAN (2021) Review
If anyone ever tries to tell you that the 1990s were a bad time for horror, just remind them of Candyman. One of the decade’s most brilliant genre efforts, Bernard Rose’s Candyman adapted Clive Barker’s short story “The Forbidden” back in 1992, introducing the world to a brand new horror icon in Tony Todd’s Candyman. Elegant, hypnotic and with a good deal on its mind about social issues, Rose’s Candyman was a slasher movie of an entirely different kind, and Todd’s titular monster a regal, sympathetic villain more in line with the classic Universal Monsters than the likes of Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers. Todd would return to play Candyman in two sequels, but to say the least, the franchise was another case of diminishing returns.
Over twenty years after Candyman 3: Day of the Dead effectively killed off the franchise, Candyman is back in director Nia DaCosta’s Candyman, written by Jordan Peele & Win Rosenfeld, along with DaCosta herself. Doubling down on the existing text of Rose’s Candyman, DaCosta’s Candyman centers on Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a struggling artist living in the now gentrified Cabrini-Green. After learning about Cabrini-Green’s past and the legend of the Candyman, Anthony embarks on a journey not too unlike Helen Lyle’s in the original classic, finding out firsthand that the legend is true. And Candyman is real.
Why continue the Candyman franchise here in 2021, twenty years after the last installment? DaCosta, Peele and Rosenfeld have cracked that code quite brilliantly, opening up the mythology and introducing the idea that Candyman, to borrow a particularly potent line of dialogue from the film, “isn’t a he.” Rather, it’s “the whole damn hive.” DaCosta’s Candyman, to be clear, is a sequel to the original classic rather than a remake of Rose’s film, set in a world where Tony Todd’s Candyman — officially named Daniel Robitaille in Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh — exists, and he’s not the only Candyman out there. Rather, “Candyman” is a moniker given to generations of innocent Black men who have been killed by racist violence over the years, with Todd’s Robitaille merely being the first of his kind.
It’s Colman Domingo who delivers the aforementioned line of dialogue to Abdul-Mateen II’s Anthony McCoy, and it’s one of the film’s most powerful scenes. As Domingo’s William Burke explains, “Candyman is how we deal with the fact that these things happen. That they’re still happening.” It’s this monologue that effectively lays out the core theme of DaCosta’s Candyman, and it’s such a smart choice because it’s a natural, organic extension of the storyline from the first film. But while Domingo’s monologue is crystal clear in justifying the existence of a brand new Candyman here in 2021, as well as driving home its central message — “say his name,” this time around, becomes a rallying cry to never forget the innocent lives lost — the film as a whole isn’t quite so adept at delivering that clarity, focus and coherence.
More specifically, DaCosta’s Candyman often seems to be at odds with itself, struggling to say everything it wants to say with the material while also connecting those dots to the existing mythology of the Candyman franchise. Here we have a film where one Candyman is taking victims left and right and Anthony McCoy himself is literally becoming another Candyman entirely, DaCosta introducing a unique body-horror element to the franchise that makes for some of the film’s biggest gross-outs. There are multiple different ideas at play in Candyman 2021, and in trying to say too much and do too much, DaCosta and her filmmaking team end up with a movie that’s perhaps ambitious to a fault. It’s too busy, too unfocused, and by the time the final act rolls around, a big swing of the bat makes a real mess of things.
While the storyline may be too jumbled and overly complicated to truly land the powerful blows it should be dishing out, one thing that nobody can take away from DaCosta’s horror debut is that she damn sure has a flair for making horror movies. Candyman is creatively and stylishly shot the whole way through, DaCosta often playing with the franchise’s mirror motif to pull off some really great moments. And when it comes time to shed blood and show off the true power of the Candyman’s fearsome hook hand, DaCosta brings that violence to the screen in ways that are always unconventional and often highly effective. Rather than showing every slash and gouge with practical effects or digital enhancements, DaCosta allows for much of the violence to play out just off screen, relying on incredible sound design to make sure you feel and hear every rip, tear, and squelch. Particularly in a standout sequence in a school bathroom, it’s actually more gruesome than if she had shown the mayhem in full-on detail. Another kill scene plays out in an increasingly distant wide shot from the outside of an apartment complex, horror movie murder becoming an artform in DaCosta’s hands.
But amidst all the bloodshed and blunt messaging, what’s lost are the characters and the story’s ability to breathe, shine, and stick its landings. Racing from one story thread to the next, DaCosta’s Candyman is only ever able to bring surface level characters to the screen in its too-short 90-minute runtime, and only briefly touch upon each of those ideas at play. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II has an undeniable screen presence as our central character, but we never really get to know Anthony beyond the basic brush strokes that define him. Same goes for Teyonah Parris as Anthony’s girlfriend Brianna Cartwright, whose own storyline centered on an extreme childhood trauma is never actually explored beyond one moment that feels like the shadow of an idea that was largely scrubbed from the script. Even our main Candyman himself feels a bit like an afterthought here, popping up here and there to kill off random characters, and he’s hardly the imposing presence he was when Tony Todd was wielding the hook.
Saddled with the mythology of the original, DaCosta’s film boldly attempts to recontextualize existing elements and make them fit together with her own ideas, and the effort is admirable while the execution is clunky. It’s almost like the film wanted to do its own thing entirely while perhaps studio input ensured it had to fit in with what came before it, and it’s hard not to think that it might’ve been better off if it left behind the past entirely. DaCosta plays with so many different ideas that could’ve made for incredibly powerful films in their own right, but little of what’s going on here fully comes together in the end. It’s simply too overstuffed, ultimately complicating the Candyman mythology and suggesting that DaCosta isn’t entirely sure what precisely she wants the “Candyman” in her film to represent. Is he a symbol? A martyr? A monster? A living reminder? A coping mechanism? A beacon of hope? Perhaps even a protector? The script tries to have its cake and eat it too, and none of it goes down easy as a result.
There’s perhaps no horror franchise from the ’80s or ’90s that’s more deserving of a relaunch here in 2021 than Candyman, and to their credit, Nia DaCosta and the team behind this one have more than succeeded in coming up with the proper approach. So it’s somewhat frustrating, alas, that the original Candyman more powerfully covered much of the same ground nearly thirty years ago, discussing the very same topics with a bit more focus and long-lasting resonance. The new Candyman never quite manages to emerge from the shadow of a true classic, even if it’s ultimately able to stand alongside it as the second best Candyman movie we’ve gotten to date. I only wish it had been able to fit its individual pieces together in a more satisfying and impactful way, because there’s a whole lot going on here that suggests greatness was in reach.
It’s good. It’s just a bummer that it’s not great.
