Candyman
Nia DaCosta’s masterly, deeply unsettling film is not just another horror sequel.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II
There are always those who don’t believe. The myth goes that if you stand in front of a mirror and say his name five times, the Candyman will come out and get you. The world has changed a lot since the original film was released back in 1993. As has the setting. The run-down projects of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green, on the Near North Side, have been cleared to make way for a new gentrification. And so the new film is all bright, open-plan apartments and minimalist public spaces, with mirrors everywhere…
Tony Todd returns as the eponymous bogeyman, but he’s a shadowy figure appearing half-seen in a shattered reflection or stepping out of a hole in the wall. Our new protagonist is Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a cocky visual artist whose girlfriend, Brianna (Teyonah Parris), runs an upscale art gallery. But Anthony has lost his mojo, so when Brianna’s brother Troy (the London-born Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) relates the macabre tale of Candyman, Anthony sets off for inspiration to what remains of the projects. There he meets William Burke (Colman Domingo), who claims that the legend is for real…
If the sequel doesn’t entirely step outside the horror genre, it is a constant joy to behold. Whether patrolling Chicago’s skyscrapers with her camera upside down or framing her subjects like figures in a landscape, director Nia DaCosta exhibits a compelling visual style. And the scenes of slaughter prove particularly unnerving, more by what we don’t see than by what we do. Not that DaCosta pulls back from the gore, showcasing at least three scenes that will have the squeamish vomiting for the exit. The 15 certificate seems a little puzzling – I don’t know any fifteen-year-old that I’d let anywhere near it. The first Candyman was an 18, and its follow-up is considerably more disturbing, not to say gruesome. Well, the times they are a’changing.
But there’s so much more to this Candyman than the horror. The film is also a timely commentary on race, art and urban change, with Chicago itself stepping in as a major player. Just as the art critic Finley Stephens (Rebecca Spence) comments on one painting that there is “not much room for the viewer in the interpretation,” so DaCosta’s film can be viewed in several ways. DaCosta herself is black and co-penned the script with Win Rosenfeld and Jordan Peele. Rosenfeld is the president and CEO of Peele’s production company Monkeyjaw, while Peele himself wrote and directed Get Out and Us. With Candyman, Peele is cementing the gold standard of the black horror subgenre (to which Antebellum should be added as a major example), while DaCosta has gone on to direct the new Marvel blockbuster, The Marvels. The latter gig will make her the youngest director of a Marvel film (she was born in 1989) and the first black woman. And with Candyman, which debuted at the No. 1 spot at the US box-office, she has become the first black woman to have directed a chart-topping movie.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Colman Domingo, Kyle Kaminsky, Vanessa Williams, Rebbeca Spence, Brian King, Miriam Moss, Carl Clemons-Hopkins, Michael Hargrove, Rodney L Jones III, Heidi Grace Engerman, Tony Todd, and the voice of Virginia Madsen.
Dir Nia DaCosta, Pro Ian Cooper, Win Rosenfeld and Jordan Peele, Screenplay Jordan Peele, Win Rosenfeld and Nia DaCosta, Ph John Guleserian, Pro Des Cara Brower, Ed Catrin Hedström, Music Robert A. A. Lowe, Costumes Lizzie Cook, Sound Michael Babock and Chris Diebold.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Monkeypaw Productions/Bron Creative-Universal Pictures.
91 mins. USA/Canada. 2021. Rel: 27 August 2021. Cert. 15.
