The film opens with Sammy Davis Jr.’s classic version of “The Candy Man” by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, but, for some reason, all the logos are backwards (probably because mirrors play a large part in the film). Troy is the one who spins the first Candyman story, the beginning of repeated instances of how violence is perpetuated on black bodies by whites and the white-created systems. It would be different if Grady actually contributed to the plot. Among the many instances is when Brianna tells her brother Troy (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett): “White people built the ghetto and then erased it when they realized they built the ghetto.” Troy, by the way, is given a white boyfriend (Kyle Kaminsky as Grady Greenberg), who seems to only exist to show how liberal the filmmakers are. Multiple times the characters go on about gentrification. What I dislike is the film’s pushing an agenda that has little due to the horror. These include the scene that shows Lyle’s grisly end and the history of Candyman portrayals during the closing credits. The two things I like best about the film are John Guleserian’s cinematography and the use of shadow puppets by Manual Cinema to depict the Candyman historical scenes. The result is a film that is not as scary as it should be and which loses its logic towards the end. The film, directed and co-written by Nia DaCosta, and co-written by Jordan Peele (“Get Out,” “Us”) and Win Rosenfeld, does some things very well and some too heavy-handed. The connection with the original film is Virginia Madsen’s Helen Lyle character, whose voice is heard in the film.Īgain the film is set in Chicago’s Cabrini Green area, but the ghetto-like housing development when Lyle met her fate is radically changed, with the high towers torn down and the area gentrified, with apparently a lot of artist types living there, such as central African-American couple of painter Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II of HBO’s “Watchman,” the upcoming “Matrix Revolutions”), who is having painter’s block, and his other half Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris of “If Beale Street Could Talk,” “The Marvels”), who arranges art gallery shows. All three previous films starred Tony Todd as the Candyman, and Todd appears in the extras here. This reimagining of 1992’s “Candyman,” based on the story “The Forbidden” by Clive Barker (a favorite author), does touch with the original film, but ignores the two sequels that came in 19. Candyman (Universal, Blu-ray or DVD, R, 91 min.).
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