Candyman in 1992 had a wide lens which meant it used horror tropes to get through America’s slave owning history and the gentrification that took place afterwards in Chicago of the 90s at Cabrini-Green housing projects. The kind of actor Tony Todd who can project his presence effectively just by being in the same room as a camera, played with melancholy, menace and melodrama; he stated that the character was like his own Phantom of the Opera.
Nia DaCosta reimagines Candyman together with Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld such that they remain current themes in the original film like police brutality, cultural appropriation and devaluation of Black bodies but are more openly expressed. Following artist Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who is an adult having been abducted as a child by the Candyman in 1992 film. At present, he has shifted into this swanky new apartment located within what was formerly Cabrini-Green, now gentrified with an art dealer girlfriend named Brianna (Teyonah Parris). In contemporary America where high profile cop killings involving Blacks transpire almost every day, this legend from Candyman (the son of a slave and lover to white woman who lynching transformed him into perpetual avenger) still pervades its territory. Currently suffering from creative blockage due to his refusal to turn black pain into consumable commodities by painting symbols of anti-black violence such as nooses or chains; McCoy comes across one of few remaining apartment blocks adjacent to former Cabrini-Green lands. It is thus ironic that inspiration first strikes him at the last remaining apartments on former grounds that were once Cabrini Green and through their super-legendary black trauma—Candyman himself.
DaCosta’s Candyman would have us believe that it is reclaiming Bernard Rose’s white-cast white-written movie which capitalized on forbidden interracial love to produce a gothic tragedy replete with blood and camp. Since the protagonists are artists and most of it happens in the antiseptic world of galleries and exhibitions, the new Candyman sometimes goes overboard on talking about appropriation but also on condemning black trauma. A pretentious white critic receives a sincere lecture from McCoy about why contemporary audiences often fail to grasp or simply dismiss Black art when she suddenly becomes enthusiastic about McCoy’s work following the murder of two people who went through his recent exhibition which had mirrors and dared the viewer to utter Candyman’s name. It sometimes looks like this film is satirizing the insatiable greed that suffuses much of art among other things as well as non-black audiences’ vulture-like appetite for black pain. Moreover, DaCosta teases her audience by suggesting that because of McCoy’s exhibit perhaps Candyman could even go viral.
The problem with Candyman is that it takes itself too seriously and kills the fun. The language and reworkings of the Candyman myth have an overly schematic quality as they present themselves as stiff declarations about how black people were killed—a laudable cause but one that is not so well executed here. The most annoyingly didactic aspect of this film, however, is its way of expanding on the story of Candyman: it makes the name into a mantle–a sort of franchise for other Black men, who were victims of their own generations’ racism (slavery, Jim Crow, police) – he said in explanation probably thinking that no one was getting his suggestion. Hence DaCosta’s Candyman does not only become the revenge machine but also a means to establish fair racial justice across generations. This strikes a chord with contemporary culture’s preoccupation with moralizing old narratives.
New interpretations of stories seem to have an inherent desire to prove that they are “relevant.” But this is something that has always been true in relation to Candyman. It made the character seductive and hypnotic right from its first portrayal . And while Nia DaCosta’s film certainly boasts technically impressive cinematography and some weird CGI moments, it lacks all those elaborate aesthetic complexities like those found in the original movie shot by Bernard Rose or it may be because of them that are reminiscent of offbeat art films. The film loses its fear factor when it attempts to impart self-importance through bold neon captions. Towards the end there is another cruel death involving a black man at hands of white police officers which amounts to just another act before final credits roll. Although this last scene turns out to be quite different from what DCosta wanted since she aims at making a crowd-pleasing climax around it; instead she ends up trading horror’s chewy prurience for overwrought sermonizing.
Watch free movies on Fzmovies