Review: Candyman

Right from the start, Candyman has always been about looking at a monster, and not because of all the mirrors. The first Candyman film established that "The Candyman" wasn't just a slasher like Jason or Freddy Kruger; he was a legend, a creature that worked (and the first film worked very well indeed) because of the setting and backstory and what he symbolised at least as much as he did because he looked cool and murdered people. It was a slasher story with things to say; the problem with this sequel (not a reboot) is that at times it has so much to say it struggles to get any of it out clearly.

Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is an artist who's lost his drive artistically and with it his already precarious place in the Chicago arts scene. His girlfriend Brianna (Teyonah Parris) is an art gallery director who's going places, and his failure to keep up is causing friction. Looking for inspiration in his community - well, not his actual community, because his community isn't interesting to white buyers, but in the increasingly gentrified former slum known as Cabrini Green - he hears about the legend of Candyman.

Candyman's angle - his hook, if you will - is that after you say his name five times in a mirror he turns up and kills you. You'd think would rapidly thin out the number of people stupid enough to do that and surprise! This film is (in part) directly about that. It's also about gentrification, black culture and where it's situated in America, cycles of social unrest and abuse, myth-making, and why both cops and art critics deserve to die. 

That's a lot, and the dreamy, almost aimless storytelling early on that enables it to touch on so many different angles is one of this film's biggest strengths. For much of the film the story almost drifts along, scene following scene propelled more by dream logic than anything else. There's two main threads - Anthony's increasingly unstable state both physically and mentally, and the growing bodycount racked up by Candyman as Anthony's Candyman-themed exhibit at a local arts show spreads the word around - each increasingly surrounded by a buzzing cloud of dread.

Eventually it's time to tie everything together, and that's where this stumbles. It turns out there is a reason of sorts behind all this, but it's too little, too late, and too muddled to really pay off on all the creepy promise of the earlier scenes. This version of Candyman is covering a lot of ground culturally, and even a hook-handed killer swarming with bees can't do everything.

(one thing this film does do? Brings back Tony Todd in the role, though he's not the only Candyman we see)

It's ironic that this is a story about a slasher icon that survives across time as a legend, as Candyman creator Clive Barker (Bernard Rose co-wrote and directed the original film) has gone from being the hottest thing in horror when the first film was made to barely a footnote in the credits. This time around Jordan Peele is the big name on the poster, though it's the often striking visuals from up-and-coming director Nia DeCosta (who's already been tapped for a Marvel movie) that make this work.

The opening scene (re-interpreted throughout the film) where a hook handed man comes out of a hole in a wall to offer candy to a child is pure nightmare fodder. Most other horror movies wish they had an opening that strong; if this never quite lives up to that, it doesn't let it down either.

- Anthony Morris