‘I am the writing on the wall, the sweet smell of blood. Be my victim...’
There are two truths that I have long held to be self evident about the original Candyman movie. One, that it is the most underrated horror movie of all time, and two, that along with Hellraiser, it is the horror franchise that is crying out for a reboot. When the announcement came that horror maestro Jordan Peele was finally bringing Daniel Robitaille back from the dead I was delighted. Eventually, Peele stayed on as writer/producer and brought in Nia DaCosta as director. The result is a film that pays homage to the original without ever being in danger of surpassing it…
30 years on from the events of the original movie, Carbrini Green has been gentrified and the Candyman forgotten about. A chance encounter between an artist struggling for inspiration (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and a survivor of the Candyman attacks (Colman Domingo) breathes life into a legend.
As with the recent Halloween movie, Candyman chooses to dispense with everything other than the original movie and acts as a direct sequel to that masterpiece. Whilst only a handful of characters return, when they do it has a big impact and DaCosta does a good job in weaving strands of the source material throughout rather than announcing every call back with flashing neon lights. Abdul-Mateen II does a good if unspectacular job in anchoring the film and the decision to alter the mythology to include numerous Candymen rather than just Robitaille is inspired.
Not everything here works, however. The social commentary in the source material was always overplayed, it was at its core a straightforward slasher movie, and there is far too much of it here. I don’t go to a horror movie for a lecture on police violence, particularly when it is so on the nose. Even more regretfully, Candyman doesn’t have enough scares to really leave a lasting impact. Original director Bernard Rose was incredibly successful in cultivating a raising sense of dread in a way that DaCosta fails to match here. Whilst it is suitably gruesome, it’s not quite enough to inspire sleepless nights.
In the end, Candyman is a successful reboot and undoubtedly the best film in the franchise since the original, but is that enough? Maybe not.