Candyman (2021) – Film Review

In the present day, a decade after the last of the Cabrini towers were torn down, Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and his partner Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris) move into a loft in the now gentrified Cabrini. A chance encounter with an old-timer exposes Anthony to the true story behind Candyman. Anxious to use these macabre details in his studio as fresh grist for paintings, he unknowingly opens a door to a complex past that unravels his own sanity and unleashes a terrifying wave of violence.

In 2018, the long-running and immensely popular Halloween film franchise got a brand new installment in the form of David Gordon Green‘s Halloween, which served as a direct sequel to the 1978 John Carpenter-directed horror classic, and essentially pretended that all the sequels that came before it never happened. This has since spawned a trilogy that we are soon going to get the remaining entries.

Green’s new film proved to be a hit among many (including myself) who praised the direction the sequel took with its fun bloody moments, great character beats, and world-building. Now, Bernard Rose‘s Candyman has essentially gotten the same exact treatment.

Instead of going down the dreaded and often convoluted reboot/remake path, Nia DaCosta wanted to take a different route with her new film Candyman, which serves as a direct sequel to Rose’s iconic horror classic. DaCosta not only builds upon the world of the first film, but she brings all the horrors – supernatural and real-world – to life in immensely impressive ways. This is one of the best films of the year.

The character of the Candyman is one that is undoubtedly tricky to tackle because of just how mysterious he is. Although his origins are known, he is still an extremely complex character and one that, if depicted sloppily, could be unintentionally hilarious, but this new version of Candyman is the furthest thing from funny. It’s downright horrifying.

If you don’t get chills in the opening scene alone, then I don’t know what to say to you other than “Did we watch the same movie?”. After the terrifying opener, we are treated to a glimpse at just how beautiful the cinematography will be, with a title sequence that chilled my bones. John Guleserian‘s camera work here is nothing short of masterful.

Oftentimes in the film, you can actually see the creepier-than-ever Candyman lurking behind a corridor or peering from a doorway if you look just close enough. It’s one of those things that you notice and it makes you gasp. Once you see it you can’t unsee it. Whenever the titular villain is on-screen lurking behind something, you know it’s only a matter of time before disaster strikes.

But thankfully, this is not the type of horror film that is plagued with corny jump scares. As a matter of fact, Candyman has zero jump scares to be found which is wonderful. It truly shows that the director as well as screenwriters Jordan Peele, and Win Rosenfeld understood how to make a film that’s properly scary without throwing a bunch of weird images accompanied by a loud sound at our faces.

Horror films like this one truly don’t come around often and sadly, whenever they do, not many people go to see them. Candyman has one of the most unique approaches to the genre I’ve witnessed in years. Instead of being an in-your-face horror slasher, it instead focuses a great deal on the world around the Candyman and how the legend of the feared villain has affected so many people in the Cabrini-Green area.

The legend goes that if you say his name five times while looking in a mirror, he will appear behind you and kill you without hesitation, and yet, even if somebody says his name once, characters will get incredibly paranoid because they don’t want to even take a chance of reliving the past. They’ve all heard about the stories and terrible murders that Candyman committed throughout the years and they understand that bringing him back would be, for them, the end of the world.

But of course, we all know Candyman is in this movie so, thus, we know that somebody says his name five times in a mirror and the rest is history from that point onward. Whenever he first appeared in this movie, my stomach dropped. Truly. Not because I was terrified of what I was going to watch, but because I was getting worried for our lead characters.

They are extremely well-written and the respective actors that portray them are fantastic, most notably Yahya Abdul-Mateen II who absolutely shines in the role of Anthony McCoy, a visual artist who quickly becomes obsessed with investigating the legend of the Candyman which leads him down a dark rabbit hole that he cannot escape from no matter what.

Abdul-Mateen is asked to do so much here and yet he rises above and beyond the occasion. He absolutely owns this role and you can feel every emotion he is trying to portray. He is most definitely a rising star in the making and I can only hope he gets more famous as the years go on. And equally brilliant here is Teyonah Parris as his girlfriend Brianna who also gets asked to do a lot. Their on-screen chemistry is nothing short of electric.

The original Candyman was known for having wonderfully creepy musical cues from composer Philip Glass, and thankfully, the score here from Robert A. A. Lowe is just as remarkable. It finds unique ways to really creep up on you, is extremely subtle, and attacks you at full force when the moment is just right. It’s honestly a thing of beauty.

And the editing from Catrin Hedström is sublime. Hedström constantly finds ways to splice scenes together that feel visually cohesive and thematically striking. Everybody that worked on this film understood the assignment and crafted a true masterwork.

Bringing a Candyman sequel to life would be a difficult task for any director to do, no matter how accomplished they are, but DaCosta truly makes it look easy here. We don’t get movies like this one often. It’s the rare type of horror that’ll get people talking and one that will stay in your head for a long time. It’ll also make you afraid of looking into the mirror. Just don’t say Candyman five times. Or maybe you should do it. I’ll leave that choice up to you.