Director Nia DaCosta and producer Jordan Peele's Candyman is a direct sequel to the 1992 film of the same name. The franchise's history has had ups and downs, to say the least, with consecutive terrible sequels that did nothing but muddle the lore and tarnish the original. However, this soft reboot could finally propel the cult franchise back to glory.
The original Candyman had something a bit more under its veneer of slasher scares -- something powerful to say about America’s foundation and history of racial violence, which the title villain's origin story reflects. He was a well-respected artist who fell in love and had a child with a white woman whom he had been hired to paint. He was then set up by a lynch mob organized by the woman’s father. They proceeded to cut his arm off and slather him in honey. This attracted bees which eventually stung him to death. Finally, he was then buried under the projects where the film takes place.
The story recalls Emmett Till, an African American teenager in Chicago who was brutally murdered for allegedly “flirting with a white woman” in 1955. It’s that slice of reality and authenticity that represents the power of the original Candyman. The horror movie is a slasher film somewhat reflecting our own reality, which goes so far as to have Candyman as the literal foundation of the projects.
Three years later, the film got a sequel: Candyman, Farewell to the Flesh, a movie which is disastrous on most levels. Sure, it’s a competently shot with some interesting ideas, but it muddles most of the established lore from the first film. This includes the decision to move the location entirely to New Orleans, which detracts from the original film. The Mardis Gras setting didn't really add much. The filmmakers also changed the sequel from a thought-provoking conscious horror film to a more traditional slasher movie. A similar problem occurs in the third film, which takes place in 2020. Unfortunately, just like the second film, the third lacked what fans really wanted in favor of comedic level gore.
There's actually a good comparison point for the Candyman franchise in Halloween, which had a similar identity crisis for years. Then director David Gordon Green came out with his excellent soft reboot in 2018, which resuscitated the franchise after a slew of failed attempts. The reboot was so successful that a sequel has just wrapped filming, and a third film is about to be in production. What the Halloween reboot did right was take what was familiar about the original and do away with a horribly complicate timeline.
It worked so well for Halloween, and Candyman can follow in that soft reboot’s success. The original film excelled by restricting the legend to Cabrini-Green. So, through mimicking this structure and keeping the film as claustrophobic as possible, it personifies the constant dread of being a person of color in a racially charged America. The new film seems to recapture all of this by relocating back to Chicago, focusing on limited characters and portraying a modernized critique of America’s rich racist history. Candyman always had the potential to stand alongside slasher giants such as Halloween or Friday the 13th, but missed the chance due to poor, watered down sequels. Now, DaCosta and Peele's sequel seems to finally be rectifying that problem and giving the Candyman franchise one more opportunity to shine.
Candyman is directed by Nia DaCosta with a script by Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld. It stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Colman Domingo, Vanessa A. Williams, Rebecca Spence and Tony Todd. The film is scheduled to be released on June 12.