Candyman (1992) – Film Review

Skeptical graduate student Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) befriends Anne-Marie McCoy (Vanessa Williams) while researching superstitions in a housing project on Chicago’s Near North Side. From Anne-Marie, Helen learns about the Candyman (Tony Todd), a knife-wielding figure of urban legend that some of her neighbors believe to be responsible for a recent murder. After a mysterious man matching the Candyman’s description begins stalking her, Helen comes to fear that the legend may be all too real.

It’s August 24th and you know what that means – Pumpkin Spice drinks are back on the Starbucks menu! Okay, that’s not what we are here to talk about today. But with Fall just around the corner, that means it’s time to start watching some horror movies once again. To be fair, I usually watch horror films year-round anyway, but now that the Fall season is quickly approaching, I don’t feel totally alone in my horror binge.

Horror was something that I loved even as a kid but I never really binged anything back in the day. However, that all changed when I was thirteen years old and I found AMC Fear Fest for the first time. For those who are unaware, it’s essentially a program AMC holds every October where they play nothing but horror films every day in the month of October.

Naturally, when I found out about this, I was absolutely thrilled and spent almost every day of the month watching horror films after school. That year, I had watched a lot of the classics such as John Carpenter‘s Halloween and nearly all of the Friday the 13th films, but with my binge came a lot of movies I had never seen before, let alone heard of. One of them stuck out to me more than anything else – Bernard Rose‘s Candyman.

As I was watching the film for the first time all those years ago, my mother was telling me stories of her being terrified when she watched it, attempting to say Candyman’s name in the mirror but simply couldn’t bring herself to do it. That’s one of the most incredible strengths of this movie – it genuinely makes you feel uneasy by even just hearing the titular villain’s name.

In the earliest scenes in the film, we are told that the legend of the Candyman exists in urban Chicago and that if you say his name five times in the mirror, he will appear. Helen Lyle, a semiotics graduate student proceeds to investigate the myth and finds out slowly but surely that it most definitely exists.

Courtesy of TriStar Pictures

There’s always been something so fascinating about the world of Candyman – everything about it look grimy and run-down but the strange thing is that I can’t help but feel a strange sort of warmth every time I watch this movie. I’ve always been a fan of mysteries and urban legends and this movie is essentially all about that. The cool and sleek cinematography by Anthony B. Richmond is extremely understated here.

There really isn’t that one shot that makes you go “Wow!”, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. This movie feels cold and rainy but also warm and comforting, and it takes a talented director of photography to illustrate this well, and Richmond certainly rose to the occasion. And Rose’s direction in general is sublime.

Even though the editing by Dan Rae can occasionally be a bit of a mess here and there, the story still flows remarkably well and is full of long sequences that some viewers today may consider boring, because we live in an age of horror where we are so used to seeing so many crazy things happening over and over whereas, in Candyman, we have to wait to be creeped out, which I am perfectly fine with.

It’s genuinely remarkable how creepy this film is even though it only ever focuses on one storyline, and one that’s so incredibly simplistic. A woman hears of an unsettling urban legend in her area and decides to go investigate it. It’s so simple but the execution is brilliant. Virginia Madsen is wonderful as Helen and provides the heart and soul of the movie, and Tony Todd is easily one of the most chilling actors in any horror film in my personal opinion.

The first time he appears in this movie, I got goosebumps. There’s something so incredibly unnerving about his on-screen presence, and it wouldn’t have been the same if they had chosen a different actor for the part. Todd’s facial expressions are chilling and the way he walks with his hook hand is the stuff that nightmares are made of.

I’m so happy that Candyman holds up for me all these years later. Sometimes as a kid you’ll watch a movie and adore it but when you grow up and revisit it, you suddenly find yourself not enjoying it nearly as much. Thankfully, I can say that I actually enjoyed Candyman more on my rewatch today than on my first viewing at the age of thirteen. Here’s hoping the upcoming Nia DaCosta sequel is just as chilling as this one.