I think if anyone was unsure about Nia DaCosta’s directing talents before, Candyman puts them to bed. Not only does she resurrect the Candyman by building on the original, but her intelligent design of urban legends’ inherent malleability also allows her to create her own Candyman to stand alongside Tony Todd’s original. Candyman is playing in cinemas now.
The original Candyman was surprisingly different from the crop of 1990s horror films with which it embedded itself. Its slasher front with a socio-political underbelly feels prophetic of the kinds of horror we find ourselves watching today. It also created one of the only prolific Black horror icons to date, with a hauntingly unsettling Tony Todd searing the character into people’s minds. There was great potential for a Candyman franchise under the right creative direction, but middling-to-awful sequels ensured it remained buried. That is, until Nia DaCosta and Jordan Peele dug it back up again.
Jordan Peele produced and helped to pen the new Candyman’s script, but it’s important to state this – this is Nia DaCosta’s Candyman, not Peele’s. DaCosta is able to bring both old fans and new into the fold with her amalgamation of a reboot and continuation in one, which is a difficult task to pull off.
If you have seen the original, you will notice intentional narrative tweaks and shifts that seem off, as though they were misremembered or perhaps knowingly changed. If you haven’t seen the original, you feel close to Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s Anthony, rummaging through this complicated, perhaps misleading history, learning and unlearning at the same time. DaCosta’s playing on the malleability of urban legends – how they change from person to person, over time, with details shifting through omissions or inclusions, tweaked and shifted more or less. We get a new retelling of the Candyman legend, but it by no means overwrites the original – they coincide, just pieces of the greater Candyman mythology.
DaCosta has also picked some of the strongest players in Hollywood right now for her own retelling – Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo; it’s an absolutely insane cast, with the level of talent rocketing through the roof. Those three together are devastatingly powerful as a triptych. DaCosta weaves the lives of these characters into a strangely poetic tapestry, linking them through a collective trauma of death, grief, and fear. It’s almost as though both Domingo and Parris represent two sides, with Yahya’s Anthony trapped in the middle, being torn apart by the demands of the two. Domingo and Mateen II’s relationship is a particularly mysterious puzzle that gradually unfolds as we push further, as Domingo’s performance offers little clues to their true intentions. Colman Domingo is easily one of the best actors currently working, and he’s no less fantastic in Candyman – he’s on a set course for a meteoric rise, certainly one to keep an eye on.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a slasher without the guts and the gore, and Candyman certainly is graphic. People are suspended in mid-air, their throats torn open as their blood falls to the floor like a waterfall. It’s brutally visceral but precisely so – the violence never feels gratuitous, and what horrifies comes from the complex use of sound just as much as the visuals. What’s heard, but not seen, is often so much scarier, as your brain is forced to fill in the gaps. So when we hear the sound of Candyman’s hook gutting and skinning high-school students, we can only imagine how horrifying it must look. Booming screams, thunderous slams against walls and doors – DaCosta knows exactly how to titillate the imagination in the right ways to get your heart racing without having to show you how the sausage is skinned.
It’s also surprisingly playful at points – Candyman is hilariously self-aware in that almost all the murders are of white people, the result of their own moronic actions. Pretty much every non-white person in Candyman knows not to fuck with the summoning, nor to go into dark basements, but white people are more than happy to engage. It’s a great reflection on the horrific violence and trauma we see in horror is often the result of moronic, ignorant actions, rather than it happening to ‘pure and innocent’ people.
DaCosta continues these racial themes, but takes it to a much darker place when reflecting on Cabrini Green and its relationship to the police force – there are multiple moments where you actually feel more terrified of the looming police presence than the Candyman himself. A simple look, or a slight tonal intention, suddenly injects this intense discomfort and a sense of lack of safety, a hint that the true monsters may have just entered the room. DaCosta almost reclaims The Candyman through this socio-cultural lens, reframing her personal Candyman as an ambiguous anti-hero of sorts, almost a protector of a community, rather than an indiscriminate harbinger of fear and death.
I think if anyone was unsure about Nia DaCosta’s directing talents before, Candyman puts them to bed. Not only does she resurrect the Candyman by building on the original, but her intelligent design of urban legends’ inherent malleability also allows her to create her own Candyman to stand alongside Tony Todd’s original. The result is a brilliant love letter to the original and a continuation with a clear, defined direction. It’s one of the strongest films of the year.
Follow Us