Candyman (Nia DaCosta, 2021) 4.7/5

Nia DaCosta, has pulled off the rarest of feats by creating a sequel which is equal to or better than the original with Candyman. Audiences are going to have personal preferences for which they may prefer, but there can't be much argument to suggest the attention to narrative detail in this 2021 film surpasses the original. Where the original 1992 film was somewhat messy in a narrative sense, this film is tight, focused and honed. The subjective aspects will relate much more to the style of filmmaking, the visual style of the two films and the content of the narrative. This is an extremely disciplined film. Each scene advances character or plot in a specific way, there is nothing extraneous. It does so using the themes from the first film, while expanding the mythology to suit an audience and culture 30 years removed from the original. It chooses its own intentions and objectives, and it succeeds in achieving them. Nia DaCosta, Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld have written a compelling, dense screenplay, and managed to avoid the pitfalls the majority of sequels fall into. 

Nia DaCosta succeeds in giving this film visual, musical and narrative references to the original, while also making it completely her own. In the literal and metaphorical senses, this is not your parents Candyman. This is Candyman for a new generation, contending with a new environment and ideas which weren't part of the cultural discourse when Bernard Rose's 1992 film was released. DaCosta brings to the table her own unique sense of visual style, her own ideas about what is relevant in the Candyman mythos, and less of a precious approach to the history of the "monster" in horror, with more of an eye to the history the Candyman mythos is representing on film. In the original film, Candyman is presented as being in conversation with the tradition of the semi-tragic, gothic romanticism of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man or King Kong. He's meant to be in a similar vein to those classic movie monsters. This version of Candyman leaves behind the sense of gothic tragedy, embracing a much more present, realistic sense of the tragic. He is less a creature of the supernatural, and more a creation of cultural memory and consciousness. It's less that Candyman was created and is then motivated by a need for legacy. He is the inverse, a reflection of the tragic movie monster of classic film. Where those characters end in tragedy, tragedy is the animating creation of Candyman, and because of the nature of these tragedies, this guarantees there will always be a Candyman. DaCosta and her co-writers do away with the sense of romanticism of the classic movie monsters as well.  It's the legacy creating Candyman, not the other way around. Eschewing the romantic, this is a hard edged, cutting sense of tragedy. Defeating Candyman isn't going to be a matter of "understanding the rules and discovering the monster's secret weakness" as has been the formula for a century. There is no defeating Candyman, the secret is in not giving birth to him through the constancy of these tragedies. As long as Black men are dying of racist brutality, there will be a Candyman. 

This film is also concerned with who has a responsibility to these cultural memories, the stories of the Black community in America, who has a right to wield them, what that responsibility means and what is the proper way to tell them. It comes to the conclusion that neither ignorance nor choice are able to shield Black Americans from this responsibility, and that witnesses are the ones who are in the position to decide how they should be told. Where the first was concerned with academia as a repository for cultural memory, and the academic as the collector and disseminator of stories, this film looks to the artist and those who exhibit their art. It has questions for the artist, in how they choose to present these stories, but it also has questions for the exhibitor in both who they choose to exhibit and who they choose to exhibit for. How the story is being told is as important as the right storytellers being given voice, and the right audiences being invited to engage with it. Without doubt, the film is saying intention of the storyteller plays some role in how these stories should be told and what becomes of them as a result. 

All in all, Candyman is very well made. The performances from Yahya Abdul Matheen II, Teyonah Parris and Coleman Domingo are particularly good. The score reflects back on the Phillip Glass original in interesting ways, and is also excellent. The writing is a minor miracle in the depth it puts into multiple layers of narrative. It is as much about the story as we're seeing it unfold as it is about what the story of Candyman will be once the events of the film have concluded, and that story goes out into the world of the film. One of the most impressive things is how it manages to pack so much into an eighty-six minute run time, narratively and thematically, gives everything enough weight for none of those elements to feel underserved, and doesn't leave any threads hanging.

Look for a longer, more detailed breakdown of the films themes, narrative structure and visual style in the future, probably when it becomes available for on VOD and blu ray. 

I'd rate it a 4.7 out of 5 hooks.