Review: 'Candyman' explores community trauma through genre frights and vicious violence

Candyman
3.5 out of 5 Stars
Director: Nia DaCosta
Writer: Nia DaCosta, Win Risenfeld, Jordan Peele
Starring: Yahya Abdul-Matten II, Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Colman Domingo, Vanessa Williams, Tony Todd
Genre: Horror
Rated: R for bloody horror violence, and language including some sexual references

SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) – Synopsis: Cabrini’s regentrification has replaced the subsidized housing with lofts and trendy restaurants. The ghosts of the past remain. Anthony McCoy, an artist in search of inspiration, turns to the legends of Daniel Robitaille, the son of a slave brutally murdered for his relationship with a white woman.

Review:Clive Barker’s “The Forbidden” was a story about a college student who becomes obsessed with an urban legend and becomes convinced that the old tales are connected to a series of recent murders.

If you’ve ever watched an episode of “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!” you know that these things tend to end with a man in a monster suit. In Barker’s story, there is no costume. The boogieman is real.

Director/writer Bernard Rose and actor Tony Todd took Barker’s ideas and expanded them in 1992’s “Candyman.” They gave the darkness, Daniel Robitaille, an origin story grounded in the racial violence of America’s past and present. If Candyman feels more real than Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers it is because he embodies something more specific. Something more tangible.

Directed and co-written by Nia DaCosta, 2021's "Candyman" isn't simply a reboot or regurgitation of the original film. It's absolutely a continuance of the ideas and events of the original films fleshed out. The story is centered on Anthony (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a formerly acclaimed visual artist in search of inspiration. He and his girlfriend, Brianna (Teyonah Parris), have just moved into a loft in a new building built on the property where the Cabrini towers once stood. Anthony, like many before him, becomes interested in the old urban legend of Candyman. Interest becomes obsession and it isn't long before Anthony is able the channel his newfound passion to create new paintings.

The problem is that while some are willing to believe in the stories that inspired the Candyman mythos few actually believe in his existence. He's a boogeyman, a character in a story that parents tell their children to make them behave. Anthony's art is dismissed as inauthentic. Inauthentic until the gallery owner displaying Anthony's latest work as a favor to Brianna is killed in a way that revives the legends of Candyman. The stories, the anguish and past trauma resurfaces. The body count rises and the community of Cabrini is haunted once more.

The spirit ofDaniel Robitaille is not an avenging angel sent to punish those who hurt him. He doesn't hunt the decedents of those who killed him. They doubt his existence and mockingly repeat his name five times. The consequences are severe. Quick, but undeniably severe. No, Robitaille is not about justice. He is a lingering reminder of the trauma that torments his own community. And Robitaille is only a sliver of who and what Candyman is.

Or, if you prefer, maybe "Candyman" is just a horror movie about a man with a hook for a hand who kills those who dare to call out his name. It's violence for the sake of violence. A meaningless bloodbath with nothing to say.