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Director Nia DaCosta ’s “ Candyman ” is being sold as a “spiritual sequel” to the 1992 horror classic starring Virginia Madsen and Vanessa Williams . This iteration ignores the two actual sequels to writer/director Bernard Rose ’s adaptation of a Clive Barker short story, instead picking up in present day Chicago. The Cabrini Green where Madsen’s Helen Lyle character met her grisly fate is no more; the towers have been torn down and the area’s being gentrified within an inch of its life. Had Lyle survived, she’d probably be living in a place like that of artist Anthony McCoy ( Yahya Abdul-Mateen II ). “White people built the ghetto,” says his girlfriend, Brianna ( Teyonah Parris ) to her brother, Troy ( Nathan Stewart-Jarrett ), “and then erased it when they realized they built the ghetto.” This is not the last we’ll hear about gentrification.

It’s Troy who brings new viewers up to speed, spinning the first film’s tragic story for his captive audience after warning them that where they live is haunted. “This is too much, even for you,” says his husband, Grady ( Kyle Kaminsky ) about the part featuring the decapitated Rottweiler. This sequence is done with the same type of shadow puppets used for “Candyman”’s teaser trailer. That effective short highlighted one of the major themes DaCosta and her co-writers Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld put into their script: the endless cycle of violence perpetrated on Black bodies by White supremacy and the system it created. This idea was baked into the 1992 version’s tale of Daniel Robitaille ( Tony Todd ), the original Candyman, but the focus was primarily on the White protagonist’s fate.

With Abdul-Mateen and Parris as the leads, the filmmakers are free to dig deeper into the legend and its parallels to the here and now. Their proxy is William ( Colman Domingo ), an old-timer we first see as a child puppeteer in 1977. He meets Anthony just after the latter hilariously jumps into the shadows to avoid a passing cop car. “Are they keeping us safe,” William asks, “or keeping us in?” Alluding to the press Helen Lyle received while numerous Black victims of Candyman remain unknown, William says “one White woman dies and the story lives forever.” This dovetails nicely with the Candyman legend—here’s an entity whose immortality can only be realized by having his name (and by extension, the memory of his tragedy) spoken into existence. The mirror element, a holdover from the old Bloody Mary urban legend, is a nice touch rife with symbolism. What do the victims see of themselves reflected before they literally get the hook?

Despite his disbelief in Troy’s story, Anthony is inspired to look into the history of his neighborhood in the hopes it will inspire some new paintings he can show at a gallery run by Clive Privler ( Brian King ). William provides an additional Candyman story based on his childhood run-in with a strange local man with a hook for a hand. Like Daniel Robitaille, he was brutally murdered by a mob of what passes for the law, then posthumously “cleared” of the crimes he was accused of committing. “Candyman” proposes that its monster lives on, imprisoned in his agony because this particular history keeps repeating itself. I was reminded of Oprah’s line in “Beloved,” where she says of the spirit haunting her house that “it ain’t evil. Just sad.” “Candyman isn’t a he,” William tells Anthony before warning him to stay away, “he’s the whole damn hive.”

“Dare to say his name” is this film’s tagline, intentionally echoing the rallying cry of the current movement against undue and lethal law enforcement. Horror has always been a conduit for this type of allegory, tucking that which we’re not supposed to discuss underneath the viscera and the unreality. “Candyman” acknowledges that the real world can be even more dangerous and horrifying than the supernatural. So, every time a character utters “say his name,” it immediately conjures up the emotional pain of the intended coincidence.

A more physical pain, however, awaits anyone foolish enough to say a specific name five times in a mirror. There’s a running joke about people not wanting to tempt fate by testing the urban legend. Thankfully, there are plenty of folks who have no such restrictions. One unfortunate couple learns that testing out urban legends does not make for good foreplay. And it doesn’t go unnoticed that minority characters tend to bypass certain doom by not succumbing to certain horror tropes. Brianna’s response to the idea of going down a dark basement staircase provides the film’s biggest laugh.

“Candyman” caters to fans of the original without sacrificing its own vision and story. Virginia Madsen briefly cameos (though not onscreen), as does Vanessa Williams, both in their original roles. I wouldn’t dare spoil the reasons for the latter, but the revelation shows just how well this tale is constructed. The rest of the cast give fine performances, with Abdul-Mateen standing out in an often difficult role. The actors also convince us of their relationships in a short amount of time, and it’s not just the one between Anthony and Brianna. Kaminsky and Stewart-Jarrett create an equally strong connection between their characters in a few scenes. Troy’s bond with his sister feels comfortably lived-in with its playful ribbing and genuine concern.

Jordan Peele has become the master of balancing the hard truths of being Black and brown in this country with a devilish predilection for goosing the audience the way good horror movies do. You can almost imagine that it was his idea to begin the film with Sammy Davis, Jr.’s cover of “The Candy Man” playing over backwards versions of the Universal and MGM logos. DaCosta’s visual style is a willing accomplice, as is the absolutely disgusting sound mix. She stages the kill scenes with a mix of pitch-black humor, misdirection, and clever framing, fully acknowledging that what you don’t see—or think you saw—can be a lot worse than what you did see. One well-staged murder scene takes place in a very wide shot as the camera pulls away, giving us the view of someone escaping just as the carnage occurs. Toss in some profoundly gross body horror plus a satisfying ending that nicely closes out its thesis statement, and we have the makings of a fun, thought-provoking time at the movies.

Only in theaters on August 26th.

Odie Henderson

Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire  here .

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Film credits.

Candyman (2021)

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Anthony McCoy

Teyonah Parris as Brianna Cartwright

Tony Todd as Candyman / Daniel Robitaille

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as Troy Cartwright

Colman Domingo as William Burke

Vanessa Williams as Anne-Marie McCoy

• Nia DaCosta
• Jordan Peele
• Win Rosenfeld

Cinematographer

• John Guleserian
• Catrin Hedström
• Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe

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‘Candyman’ Review: A Slasher Movie with a Sharper Social Edge Than the Original

Director Nia DaCosta deepens the 1992 cult slasher film by updating it to our own days of rage.

By Owen Gleiberman

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“ Candyman ,” the 1992 slasher movie starring Tony Todd as a vengeful specter in a floor-length fur-lined coat, with a hook for a left hand and a devoted swarm of killer bees, was an urban-legend horror film that was ahead of its time but also, just maybe, a little too much of its time. Todd’s scowling ripper started off as an enslaved person’s son, Daniel Robitaille, who in the late 1800s was a successful artist. But then he had a relationship (and fathered a child) with a wealthy white ingenue whose portrait he’d been commissioned to paint. Her father hired a lynch mob to go after him. The mob tore off his hand and covered him in honey, and a swarm of bees stung him to death. Candyman is the violent ghost he became.

That’s a potentially incendiary premise, but in 1992, amid a swarm of boilerplate sequels featuring Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, and Jason Voorhees, each of whom came with his own sadomasochistic backstory, “Candyman,” directed by the English filmmaker Bernard Rose (and adapted from a Clive Barker short story), adhered a little too closely to the stylized tropes of the slasher film. The fact that Candyman would be summoned if you said his name five times played as the kind of storybook megaplex device (“One two, Freddy’s coming for you…” ) designed to prime the audience for shock cuts. The movie worked, but like too many slasher films of the time it was more sensational than haunting.

But now “Candyman” has been remade, by the director Nia DaCosta (I’m pleased to report that Tony Todd is back — he looks a little bit older, and a lot more venerable in his grin of unspeakable pain), and what she has done is to make a horror movie that has its share of enthralling shocks, but one that’s rooted in a richer meditation on the social terror of the Candyman fable. The new “Candyman” references the plot of the original as a sinister fanfare of shadow puppets, as if to say, “That was mythology. This is reality.” It’s less a “slasher film” than a drama with a slasher in the middle of it.

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It stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II , the actor who just about seared a hole in the screen as Bobby Seale in “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” and Abdul-Mateen gives as searching a performance as you’re likely to see in a movie that’s a voluptuous pageant of fear and gore. He plays Anthony McCoy, an aspiring artist who grew up in the Cabrini-Green housing projects of Chicago, which is where much of the original “Candyman” took place. He hasn’t just heard the legend; he was taken by Candyman as a child. And now, as he prepares a new set of work for a group show that’s being organized by his girlfriend, Brianna (Teyonah Parris), who works for Clive (Brian King), a hipster gallery owner who’s the person in the movie you most want to see die in a fancy way (the film does not disappoint), Anthony looks to the Candyman as an inspiration to leave aesthetic safety behind and create a work that’s daring enough to be true.

The art-world setting allows DaCosta, who co-wrote the film with Win Rosenfeld and Jordan Peele (who is one of the producers), to offer a deft satire of gentrification, with the Cabrini-Green projects paved over — and the knowledge of American economic apartheid they represent buried right along with them. At the gallery show, Anthony’s featured piece is a mirrored installation that, if you look closely enough, contains images of horror from the past; but if you don’t look closely, you’ll just see yourself. (That’s a great metaphor for liberal myopia.) The name of the piece is “Say My Name,” and that’s a disquieting joke — because, of course, it’s a Candyman reference that plays off the rhetorical fire of our own time, in a way that suggests that confronting racial demons isn’t as simple as “acknowledging” the crimes against Black people that have happened on a daily basis. The movie says: You can acknowledge the injustice — but what happens to the rage? “Candyman” presents the return of the repressed for an era that wants to pretend it’s no longer repressing things.

One reason this “Candyman” never feels like a formula slasher film, even during the murders, is that DaCosta stages them with a spurting operatic dread that evokes the grandiloquent sadism of mid-period De Palma. When four young women prepsters stand before the school bathroom mirror and say “Candyman” five times, it’s as if they’re acting out what they think is their privilege; their deaths come at us in a way that’s just oblique enough to get you to imagine the worst. And when a know-it-all art critic (Rebecca Spence) receives her own ghastly comeuppance, DaCosta shoots it from an elegant distance that heightens the horror.

Mad slashers in movies are technically villains, and then, if they hang around long enough (i.e., for enough sequels), they turn into ironic franchise heroes; they’re the icons you want to see. But the whole premise of “Candyman” is that Candyman, from the start, is a supremely un -mad slasher. He’s a walking historical corrective, throwing the violence of white America back in its face. It’s Anthony, the film’s hero, who turns into its most haunting figure. He gets stung by a bee, creating a wound on his hand that starts to grow and rot, spreading over his body, until by the end he’s become a shattering image of what racial violence looks like when it begins to eat you up from the inside. In “Candyman,” there’s plenty of horror, but none of it is as disturbing as the true-life horror that can make people feel like they’re ghosts of the past.

Reviewed at Bryant Park Screening Room, New York, August 18, 2021. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 91 MIN.

• Production: A Universal Pictures, Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures release, in association with BRON Creative, of a Monkeypaw production. Producers: Ian Cooper, Win Rosenfeld, Jordan Peele. Executive producers: David Kern, Aaron Gilbert, Jason Cloth.
• Crew: Director: Nia DaCosta. Screenplay: Jordan Peele, Win Rosenfeld, Nia DaCosta. Camera: John Gulerserian. Editor: Catrin Hedström. Music: Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe.
• With: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Tayonah Parris, Tony Todd, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Colman Domingo, Brian King, Carl Clemons-Hopkins, Rebecca Spence, Kyle Kaminsky, Vanessa Estelle Williams.

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‘Candyman’: Yes, This Remake Is Brutal and Timely. But It Also Overreaches for Relevance

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

Be my victim. For the many who’ve seen it over the years, 1992’s Candyman remains an unforgettable, almost unforgivably effective grievance: a film whose terrors are sticky, dense, pleasurably warying, and uncomfortable; whose politics feel knowing and rife with intention, just this side of didactic, yet poisoned at the root by a premise that seemed, always, at risk of slipping somewhat beyond the film’s grasp. And yet that uncertainty remains one of its primary thrills, like watching a train careen toward a fork in the tracks with too much speed, too much force for cataclysm not to feel imminent. 

The story, you may remember. A curious white graduate student (Virginia Madsen) with an interest in urban legends (pun inescapably intended) wends her way into a corridor of Black American despair by way of Chicago’s ill-fated Cabrini-Green projects, which were once home to 15,000 residents and were, over the years, immortalized in popular culture by the giddy, hard-won vibes of the sitcom Good Times and, more urgently, by Cabrini’s firm foothold, in the public imagination, as a totem of everything wrong with public housing — a conversation that might have morphed into real public concern for the lives at stake in that place, in a city whose yawning history of errors toward race and housing have long been documented, but which instead became the terrain of political jockeying, the kind of bandying-about of blame (toward public-housing efforts, toward working-class Black people) that often left those lives forgotten. In wanders this young, book-smart blonde, with her intentions to understand (she is not a student of anthropology; nevertheless, she bears the stench of one) and her vulnerability to her own curiosity, her compulsion to dig where perhaps she oughtn’t. 

What does she find? The Candyman, of course: the American stain manifest. A villain played so memorably, so daringly, by the actor Tony Todd that this hook-handed villain, a monster lurking, literally, within the walls of those Cabrini-Green towers, would emerge more memorable for the things he said, the ways he was , than for the particulars of the murders committed. The movie sets him up, first, like an old-fashioned urban legend, a Bloody Mary-esque dare — S ay his name — that would bear the fruit of murder. But there’s that other subtext, too — S weets for the sweet . The man who above, candies in tow, seemed prone to luring children; that other kind of predator, the kind whose crimes a community reduces to whispers, silently making its way around the unspeakable as if he were a rock in the stream of their lives, better avoided than acknowledged. The terror of the man was that he was so many things at once — and that they all leant themselves to damning silence.

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Probably the least surprising thing about Nia DaCosta’s new Candyman is that it avails itself, not only of the legacy of its cinematic predecessor, but of the fate of Cabrini-Green in the interim , the efforts at so-called renewal that instead fell prey to de rigeur urban gentrification. The new Candyman is aware of that failure. It’s also aware that the upwardly mobile Black professional class is not blameless in sustaining it — and that the artists among that class are in a peculiar, double-edged position, trapped in the crosshairs of a predominately white art world that exploits the raw material of their lives while subject, for mobility’s sake, to participating in their own exploitation. 

So it goes in — and perhaps in the making of — DaCosta’s film, which stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Teyonah Parris as Anthony and Brianna, a gorgeous, well-off, art-world couple living in a condo built on the ashes of what used to be Cabrini-Green. He’s an ambitious artist in a creative rut; she’s a promising gallery director. And they were doing just fine until her brother (played Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) tried to scare them with the story of the Candyman — who isn’t real, of course, who’s just a rumor. Until he isn’t. From there begin terrors, which, in this iteration, co-written by DaCosta with producer Jordan Peele , takes the seed of one of the original movie’s social provocations — the Candyman as communal myth, an explanation for why Cabrini’s residents are so terrorized by the everyday that can also, when the cops show up, become the invisible scapegoat that leaves the actual residents blameless — and embeds it in a set of new, contemporary questions, about Black artists and the economy of white interest, about the egotism of class mobility, about police violence as we, especially over the past year and change, are prone to understanding it today.

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Which is to say: The movie’s got a lot going on. Too much, maybe, not least because its 1992 predecessor — which was based on a story by Clive Barker — was already tangled and overstuffed, attractive and repulsive, with ideas ricocheting from scene to scene that can, to this day, lure you in even as you want to hold the film at arm’s length. That movie, it’s worth remembering, used the power of Tony Todd’s singular, cutting figure, towering within the frame, delectably daring, to render the Candyman into not only an effective movie monster — for my money, one of the most disconcertingly charismatic and tempting since Bela Lugosi’s Dracula — but a symbol. Here was the afterlife of an aggravated racial history, a relic of the era of slavery, so uncanny that his mere presence in the present seemed to rip the stitches of a smoothed over, Franken-skinned history. Here was a racialized villain more terrifying for traversing the boundaries of his supposed place in the projects, popping up in white enclaves — outright summoned — as if to say that the problem of Black poverty could hardly be contained to the projects; here he was, luring a white woman into his coven of fear, tapping into that violent history, forcing us all to recognize how cogent and uncomfortable those optics were in the present. The question of whether that movie fully knew what to make of those optics is key to its discomfort.

Also key was its signature visual device, again the stuff of urban legend, but also, obviously, a ready-made social symbol: a mirror. Where do you go from there? What’s initially interesting about DaCosta’s movie is that its hero, Anthony, is a little hard to like, and that the franchise’s signature mirror, for this particular man, is both an opportunity — take a good, hard look at yourself, guy — and a curse. Anthony is complicated: a little full of himself, a little too willing to cop to the wrong demands. He’s an artist whose output has stalled somewhat, who isn’t making good on what white gallery owners see as his potential, until he effectively sells out and gives them what they want: a tour of Black pain, art about “race” — a taste of Cabrini-Green. At base, the film focuses on what begins to happen to Anthony after a visit to the old grounds Cabrini-Green results, partially, in some discoveries, but most notably in a bee sting which — Spiderman-style — begins to morph him into something he would rather not be. Or, perhaps, to expose what he doesn’t yet know that he already is. 

The new Candyman is absolutely aware of the ironies tucked into the linen of its premise, but it doesn’t quite make good on the full satirical potential of what’s at stake, even as it nudges its way there in its deliberately sterile, nearly goofy portrait of the white art world, white critics, white consumption, and Anthony’s willingness to play along. Anthony, having gone digging into the history of Cabrini after hearing about the Candyman, makes an installation called “Say His Name,” in which he dares his audience to do precisely this, into a panel of mirrors, behind which lies a cavern of haunts and images and, well, the promise of a bloody payoff. Anthony doesn’t know, at first, about that last part — it’s just a story, he’s trying to highlight the history of injustice, yadda-yadda. Suffice it to say, he grows hip to the consequences. And DaCosta’s Candyman , at its most conceptually (if not dramatically) intriguing, finds ways to tie those consequences to Anthony’s identity as an artist. There is a price to be paid for the ease with which Anthony exploits Black trauma in his art, and it plays out in so many ways, but most garishly in the transformations that begin to overtake Anthony himself. 

The most memorable scenes of DaCosta’s Candyman are the moments of actual, graphic, repulsive horror — the skin-peeling, rotting, dead-yet-alive uncanniness, the gross-out gore, the willingness to mix a conceptual vision with a powerful reliance on the basics: mirrors, negative space in the frame, the essentials of run-of-the-mill human dread. Unfortunately for many of us, the bees — those goddamned bees — are back, and their body horror theatrics are further heightened here, mostly to promising effect. As if taking its cues from The Fly , Anthony’s bite becomes a more vibrant, viscous, tortured sort of wound, and begins to spread, a change to the body that’s reflected in the changes in Anthony’s mind.

What’s scary in Candyman is the stuff that makes any good horror movie scary: simply put, the basics. But Candyman is too aware of the legacy of its predecessor’s premise. In trying to wrestle with that premise, the movie falls right into its own traps where the original toed a curious line; it overreaches, most prominently for relevance, to the point of raising questions about whether the movie understands its own, initially provocative, questions. It sets up quite a rabbit hole for Anthony to leap into, one that leads to flickers of insight — among them, the idea that violence against Black people, such as that which created the Candyman in the first place, can hardly be limited to one man, one spectacular incident of violence. 

But the movie persists to get in its own way with each new layer of fabricated revelation. Rough backstories, by way of flashbacks and strained connections, crop up without much satisfaction. Historical echoes grow dimmer with each reverberation. Candyman wants to update its predecessor by moving us back into the realm of Black lives contra the original film’s dependence on white fear. But that wisdom keeps meeting its match in hamfisted plays for relevance, immediacy — flaws that have a ring of familiarity, not to DaCosta’s work, in light of which Candyman plays like a promising step forward, a new bag of tricks from a filmmaker whose talent is well worth keeping an eye on. The movie’s most mitigating flaws instead feel in line with the work of its producer, Jordan Peele, whose Get Out has led to a veritable subgenre of Black-centered horror which, as epitomized by Peele’s own productions, particularly Twilight Zone and Lovecraft Country , has reached a point of diminishing returns, whittling the basic, satisfying schtick of his work down to the bone. Get Out was cleverly marketed as a “social thriller,” knowingly putting itself in conversation with horror movies of the 1992 Candyman ’s stripe, movies like Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs , which tempered the usual jumpy thrills with a dose of satire. Those influences weren’t unique for mixing horror with the social dilemmas of their time — horror’s entire bag has, for quite some time, been in its ability to move what society relegates to the shadow’s right into the spotlight, making the dreadful, the unspeakable, unignorable. 

To capitalize on this tradition with a sense of novelty is already somewhat suspect. But it’s also what has made Peele’s canon the phenomenon that it is. Get Out ’s success guaranteed reiteration. And DaCosta’s Candyman , which feels strongest when it feels most hers , is a movie at odds with itself, accordingly, a clash between a solid horror spectacle with some social-dilemma strings attached, on the one hand, and a try-hard grab for too much, on the other. If your response to the phrase  “Say my name” is to notice how uncomfortably close it is to the activist slogans of recent memory, the public outcries over police violence against Black people, you’re not alone: The movie is — damningly, to purposes that ultimately undo the movie with a muddle of symbols and an abandonment of coherence — one step ahead of you. 

Candyman is more of a mixed bag than a failure, but what’s disappointing isn’t the fact of its ambition: It’s the outcome. Scenes overstuffed with ideas compete for screen time with the moments in which it seems to remember, all of a sudden, that it’s a horror movie. A standout example is a school-bathroom slaughter late in the movie, involving utter non-characters, that amounts to a whole bunch of nothing, just a bit of gore on the way to the next thing. By this point it’s already clear that the film could not possibly resolve itself in a way that makes its ideas as forceful as they’re straining to be. Yet nor can it be denied that the movie goes for broke in its final scenes, anyway, rightly aware that making sense scene by scene may matter less, when you’re already in too deep, than driving home the prevailing point. 

But the point becomes something of an unfortunate movie target. And the movie falls apart when the questions on its mind come into dire conflict with its own methods of representation — a police shootout late in the film being a case in point. The Candyman of 2021 — which has an extended cast that includes new faces to the franchise, like the great Colman Domingo, as well as a few returning faces, like Vanessa E. Williams — takes its jumble of ideas, from the art world agita to the Pet Semetary vibe of its gentrification themes, to the pure and simple fact of Anthony’s ego, and pulls at the thread… and keeps pulling… until what emerges largely amounts to something of a mess. What the movie’s effortful attempts at symbolism and meaning do most effectively are undercut what’s smart about the questions it raises — and DaCosta’s fine hand at creeping us out. The movie wants to be more than it is. The result is that it winds up amounting to less than it could have been.

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Review: New 'Candyman' expands horror mythology, delivers sobering allegory of racial violence

Hide your mirrors and look out for bees: Candyman has returned, more relevant and terrifying than ever.

Director/co-writer Nia DaCosta’s gripping new reimagining (★★★ out of four; rated R; in theaters and available on digital platforms now) expands the mythology of the original 1992 “Candyman” – and makes it better in retrospect – though it's much more a slowburn social chiller than a horror-villain vehicle. (It’s awfully nice to see the legendary Tony Todd back, however.) The film acts as a creepy and sobering allegory about frightening, centuries-old racial injustice as well as a character study tackling Black artistry and the power of storytelling.

Anthony McCoy ( Yahya Abdul-Mateen II ) is a former wunderkind painter in Chicago living in a posh neighborhood that was the Cabrini-Green projects – mass gentrification has paved over generations of trauma and brought in well-to-do millennials – and he's in desperate need of new inspiration.

'Candyman': New scenes reveal hook-wielding horror  at American Black Film Festival

The events of the first “Candyman” are now urban legend, and when he hears about it, Anthony’s interest is piqued, needing to know more. Enter William Burke (Colman Domingo), a local laundromat owner who tells him of the area’s history and imparts upon him the tale of a hook-handed man known for giving out candy to children who's murdered by white cops.

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With the help of his gallery director girlfriend Brianna (Teyonah Parris), Anthony creates a mesmerizing new work that dares people to say Candyman’s name five times – which brings the horrifying figure back to life – and a bloody murder at the exhibit stirs up public interest in Anthony’s work and also sets him down a dangerous path as he also learns of the 19th-century painter (Todd) – the original subject of the Candyman legend – lynched for falling in love with a white woman.

The nightmarish visions Anthony puts on canvas worry Brianna yet garner the attention of a white art critic (Rebecca Spence) and as the body count climbs around him, the artist slowly discovers the role he plays in the mythology.

Abdul-Mateen, so impressive in “Watchmen” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” is superb navigating Anthony’s descent into insanity – the audience feels everything he goes through and sees, including an evolving image of who and what Candyman is – and DaCosta adds some wonderfully ghastly body horror to his travails. Parris is also a standout as the woman trying to keep her professional and personal lives from falling apart, and Brianna’s backstory becomes an essential aspect of the narrative.

Domingo, too, is a dynamo as the man tying everything together in a real-world manner: When Burke tells Anthony, “they love what we make, but not us” – referring to the historical white exploitation of Black artists – it cuts deeper than any wound Candyman’s hook might make.

Social horror: 10 great horror flicks with a conscience, from 'Night of the Living Dead' to 'Candyman'

Having Jordan Peele as producer/co-writer gives the new “Candyman” some horror bona fides, but DaCosta is the chief creator crafting a visually arresting work that’s deeply timely and entertaining – even when Candyman’s on one of his bloody sprees. The filmmaker evokes a definite mood from the start, using a disturbingly distorted version of Sammy Davis Jr.'s classic "The Candy Man," and crafts a movie that weaves together the real and the fictional in a meaningful fashion: The invocation of Candyman's name, a running dare for various characters, subtly reflects calls to remember actual victims of police brutality such as George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

While there’s a certain disconnect with the title antagonist – somehow he’s both spirit of vengeance and also a killer of seemingly innocents – DaCosta uses shadow puppets to stunningly tell some of the most important aspects of her narrative, lending a childlike quality to the gut-punching cycle of violence that comprises the Candyman mythology.

As Burke says, it’s not just one man but “the whole damn hive,” and no matter if you come to “Candyman” for the message or for the gore, it’s impossible not to feel the sting.

Candyman (2021)

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Candyman review – knowing horror sequel

Nia DaCosta’s visually impressive take on the cult 1992 film gives it a meta art-world twist

I n Bernard Rose’s original 1992 horror film , a white female graduate student investigated the Candyman myth and the site of his haunting – Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing project – as part of her research. Director Nia DaCosta’s smart, stylish “spiritual sequel”, co-written and produced by Jordan Peele, reimagines its protagonist as a Black artist. In this version, Anthony (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) mines creative inspiration from the tale of a killer ghost who appears when his name is uttered five times in the mirror.

DaCosta’s visual flair is apparent, from the way she details flesh turning to rotten honeycomb, to the visceral squelch of pressing open a wound. Candyman’s attacks are inventively mounted too, playing out in the reflections of floor-to-ceiling windows and a teenage girl’s compact mirror. Anthony says his paintings “focus on the body”, a self-conscious allusion to the way the director leans into body horror too.

The overall tone is one of wry knowingness, which is DaCosta’s achilles heel. A snotty white art critic (Rebecca Spence) coolly remarks that Anthony’s work takes “a pretty literal approach”. “OK, but how is it hitting you?” he responds, voicing an anxiety on behalf of the film-maker. Meanwhile Anthony’s girlfriend, a gallery owner named Brianna (Teyonah Parris), is praised for her “eye for new talent”, a nod to Peele’s patronage of DaCosta. This constant meta-commentary, and the tendency to anticipate criticism, eventually begins to grate.

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Everything We Know

Everything we know about candyman (2021), here's what we know about the jordan peele-produced, nia dacosta-directed film, based on interviews, production reports, and a fresh new trailer..

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The cult classic horror franchise Candyman returns in 2020, with the Jordan Peele -produced, Nia DaCosta ( Little Woods )-directed movie having just dropped its first teaser trailer this week. Starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II ( Aquaman ,  Watchmen ), Teyonah Parris ( If Beale Street Could Talk ), and original franchise star Tony Todd , Candyman is slated for release on June 12. Originally rumored to be a remake, it’s now being called a “spiritual sequel” to the 1992 original. Here’s what we know so far.

It’s Definitely a Sequel, Not a Reboot

When the idea of revisiting Candyman was first floated, it was assumed that the new version would be a straight remake – even by original star Tony Todd. The actor went so far as to give his blessing to the new crew and say his goodbyes to Candyman on Twitter. It turns out rumors of a new actor wielding the honey-coated hook were premature (at one point, Peele’s Get Out star Lakeith Stanfield was rumored to be taking over the role). Peele and DaCosta are positioning the new movie as a direct sequel to the 1992 film.

Star Abdul-Mateen II is playing grown-up Anthony McCoy, the baby kidnapped and used as bait by Candyman in the original film (Stanfield was rumored to be up for this role as well). Original star Vanessa Williams also reprises her role of Anthony’s mother, Anne-Marie McCoy.

Virginia Madsen Is Not Back, But Helen Is

(Photo by TriStar Pictures)

At the end of the 1992 Candyman  (spoiler alert), Helen Lyle ( Virginia Madsen ) – the graduate student studying urban legends who revives the ghostly killer – dies from burns she receives when Candyman attempts to immolate the residents of the Cabrini-Green public housing project where the film is set. The final scene shows her distraught husband Trevor ( Xander Berkeley ) saying her name 5 times in front of a mirror, inviting a scarred Helen to appear and murder him with a hook.

Although Madsen is not returning for the sequel, the character of Helen Lyle is, this time played by Cassie Kramer. Is she an apparition? Were the events at the end of the original some kind of strange dream sequence? Or will the new film incorporate flashbacks to the past? We’ll have to wait and see.

Candyman Has New Abilities

(Photo by Universal Pictures)

The ending of the original played on a key theme in the work of author Clive Barker – that of the protagonist becoming the thing they are running from or tracking down (see also: Nightbreed and The Midnight Meat Train ) – as the film ends with Helen literally becoming a new “Candywoman.” The new trailer seems to hint that Candyman has upped his game a bit. Rather than appear as a physical being, he seems to exist only in reflections and shadows, and judging from the shot where Abdul-Mateen II sees himself as Candyman in a mirror, Anthony McCoy doesn’t appear to become a Candyman surrogate like Helen, but actually the man himself.

Gentrification Is a Key Theme

The final building of what once comprised the Cabrini-Green housing project on Chicago’s North Side was demolished in 2011. Sandwiched between two wealthy Chicago neighborhoods, Lincoln Park and the Gold Coast, Cabrini-Green had always butted up against encroaching gentrification. The attempt to pave over a dark past with trendy cafes and art galleries seems to be a main theme for the new film, which takes place in a now-gentrified neighborhood where Cabrini-Green once stood.

Peele has been very upfront about maintaining the tensions of race and class in the new film. “The original was a landmark film for black representation in the horror genre,” he said in a statement released after the film was announced. “Alongside  Night of the Living Dead ,  Candyman  was a major inspiration for me as filmmaker — and to have a bold new talent like Nia at the helm of this project is truly exciting. We are honored to bring the next chapter in the Candyman canon to life and eager to provide new audiences with an entry point to Clive Barker’s legend.”

So Is Toxic Fandom

(Photo by TriStar Pictures courtesy Everett Collection)

Ian Cooper, creative director at Jordan Peele’s production company Monkeypaw, has hinted that entitled fandom will be another subtle thread in the new story. Speaking to Deadline , Cooper said, “We talk a lot about fans and the idea of appeasing fans and when you do that and how do you do that and when do you not do that. I think my issue with fandom is that it’s really problematic. It’s probably the most problematic thing facing the genre.” He went on to indicate how this may come into play in Candyman .

“I think what we’re trying to do with  Candyman  is both be mischievous in how we address the relationship to the first film but also be very satisfying.”

There Will Be Familiar Music

Like the use of a modified version of The Luniz’s “I Got Five on It” in Us , one of the best parts of the new teaser – as indicated by the #SayMyName hashtag trending on Twitter minutes after it dropped – was the way Destiny’s Child’s 1999 hit “Say My Name” was remixed with composer Philip Glass’ original score for the first Candyman .

Glass released a new recording of the Candyman score in 2016, but it’s unlikely the 83-year-old will have an active role in the new film. Producer Michael Werner Maas is credited as providing the trailer music, and will likely be involved in remixing at least parts of Glass’ score for inclusion in the new film.

There Will Be Nods to the Original Story

As a child in Liverpool, England, the four-year-old soon-to-be-horror author Barker was given some kindly words of advice by his dear, sweet old Nana that would stay with him for the rest of his life.

“My grandmother warned me, I remember, about going into public toilets because there were men who went around in public toilets and cut the genitals off little boys. This was difficult for a four-year-old to take in,” Barker recalls in the making-of documentary Sweets to the Sweet . “It terrified the wits out of me. That was the origin of Candyman .”

Candyman would take the lead in Barker’s 1984 short story “The Forbidden,” which would in turn inspire screenwriter Bernard Rose to take the story of a hook-handed urban legend haunting a rundown housing estate in downtrodden, industrial 1970s Liverpool and re-set it within the walls of the equally troubled Cabrini-Green housing project outside Chicago in the 1990s.

The original publication (in a collection called Books of Blood ) featured haunting illustrations from artist John Stewart, which appear to get a visual shout-out via some of the graffiti glimpsed in the new trailer.

It Doesn’t Have a High Bar to Cross, Financially Speaking

Candyman  wasn’t a monster box office success in 1992 (it made about $25.8 million in its domestic release), but it did well enough to earn a theatrically released sequel in 1995’s  Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (29%), which only grossed $13.9 million. The final entry was a forgettable 1999 straight-to-video installment called Candyman: Day of the Dead  (10%). Despite that, the original film, which stands at 75% on the Tomatometer, and the character himself have become iconic in their own right, so while the new film could easily best the box office performance of its predecessors, it will still have to pass muster with adoring horror buffs who may be prone to eye the new project with, at best, cautious optimism.

Candyman  opens on August 27, 2021.

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“Candyman,” Reviewed: A Sequel That Cuts Far Deeper Than the Original

By Richard Brody

The new “Candyman” is as much a sequel as a reboot. Like the original film, from 1992, it’s set in Chicago and centered on the site of the Cabrini-Green housing project, which was seen in the earlier film as a gang-infested hive of horror but is now depicted in its current form, largely demolished and replaced with new, gentrified housing. Based on the same premise of an urban legend, founded in that housing project, of a killer called Candyman who is invoked by saying his name into a mirror five times—and involving several of the same key characters, the new movie plants a firm new foundation beneath that tale. The sequel is the story of an artist whose work is, above all, an exploration of his community and its collective memory, and who uncovers, through his art, a story that consumes and destroys him. This narrative, which also involves the politics of race and class and the historical themes on which the original story depends, makes the new film—directed by Nia DaCosta, who co-wrote the script with Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld—far more probing, engaging, and challenging than the original film. So, for that matter, do the elements of style with which DaCosta realizes it, ones that both mesh with the story and add piquant points of mystery.

The movie is centered on a prosperous thirtysomething Black couple, Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris), who live in a duplex apartment on the former grounds of Cabrini-Green, on the city’s North Side. Anthony, who in the original film was an infant (and a victim of Candyman), is now an artist with a studio in the apartment’s upstairs space. Brianna, a curator, works for Clive (Brian King), an art dealer whose gallery shows Anthony’s art. Yet Anthony, at the start of the movie, is at something of an impasse: he’s been invited to exhibit in Clive’s forthcoming group show yet has no new work to offer. Then Brianna’s brother Troy (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), who comes over for dinner with his partner, Grady (Kyle Kaminsky), tells the story of the Candyman legend and the white female social scientist who’d reported on it—in effect, he tells the story of the 1992 movie—and it inspires Anthony to create a piece about the character.

The new film begins with a fresh backstory—a preface, set in 1977, in the same housing project, where another man, Sherman Fields (played by Michael Hargrove), is thought to be terrorizing neighborhood children with candy into which he’d slipped razor blades. When a kid named William is sent by his mother to the basement laundry room, Sherman—a tall and hefty man with a hook in the place of one hand—emerges from a hole in the wall of the dilapidated and neglected facility and offers William candy. Sherman turns out to be innocent of the charge—but the police hunt him down and kill him nonetheless, and this murder, not Helen’s sociological positing of gang violence, turns out to be the source of the legend.

That’s what Anthony learns when he heads to the ruins of Cabrini-Green and chances to meet the adult William (played with great poignancy and authority by Colman Domingo), who unburdens himself of his eyewitness account of the attack on Sherman—of the “true face of fear” at the sound of the police. Yet in the course of their recurring encounters, William—in effect, a hidden prophet—delivers a hieratic word to Anthony about the Candyman tale, one that links up again with the 1992 film.

That earlier movie establishes a primordial source of the myth: a nineteenth-century Black artist named Daniel Robitaille, who had an affair with a white woman after being hired to paint her portrait. Her father hired goons to torture and kill him. In the 1992 film, he returns as Candyman, whereas in the new film William expands and clarifies the myth: far from identifying Candyman with Robitaille or, for that matter, with Sherman, he reveals that these men are only two in a litany of Black victims of police brutality and racist vigilantism—and that Candyman stands for them all. Far from a means of coping with the random violence of Cabrini-Green residents against one another, the Candyman tale is the story of widespread, wrongful, wanton violence against Black people. The ongoing, unredeemed sum of these untold victims’ agony culminates in the myth—and, more important, in the reality that the myth represents—and Anthony, armed with this knowledge, expands his art with an obsessional fervor ranging far beyond the myth’s local specifics.

I’m always wary of spoiling endings, but with the new “Candyman” I’m leery of even disclosing elements of the setup, which offers its own surprises. When it’s time for Clive’s group show (which, by the way, is titled “ A Fickle Sonance ,” the name of a 1961 album by the great saxophonist Jackie McLean), Anthony submits a piece of interactive work, based on the Candyman story, that he titled “Say My Name,” a sharp double reference to the summoning of the killer and to the # SayHerName campaign calling attention to female victims of police violence. Unsurprisingly, the project is both misunderstood and derided by a prominent white art critic (Rebecca Spence) who attends the show—though when the work becomes unexpectedly famous for its real-life power to shed real blood, she reconsiders. (Anthony gets a measure of revenge nonetheless.) In his newfound fame, he also finds himself yielding to the temptations of artistic vanity and demagogy.

As in the earlier film, Candyman gets his prime traits—his prosthetic hook and his ambient swarm of bees—from Robitaille, whose assailants are said to have chopped off his hand and smeared him with honey so that he’d be stung to death. (Both characters are again played by Tony Todd.) In the new film, as Anthony’s work gravitates to the legend and the figure of Candyman, he is shocked to find himself bearing other affinities with Robitaille, and so, with the killer, too. (The theme gives rise to some of the film’s goriest details of body horror.) Meanwhile, Anthony also uncovers a family secret—a calculated silence that, as in a Greek tragedy, has led him through life on a blind course of self-ignorance and that, when he gets too close to it, wreaks havoc on him. The symbolic elements of this new “Candyman” have a raw and furious power—the anguished bearing of witness and the burden of unbearable, unspeakable knowledge, and the silencing of it by the oppressive indifference of (white) society at large. The spirit of revenge and its high moral price; the danger of artistic expression veering heedlessly into reckless self-absorption; the inescapable tension between personal relationships and blind artistic drive: DaCosta realizes these themes with a fine filigree of inflected details, both in her cinematic compositions and in the performances she elicits.

At certain moments the actors pierce the texture of the movie with their own mnemonic power, as when Anthony, nosing around the ruins of Cabrini-Green, hears a police siren and jumps back to hide behind a wall, or when Brianna has a warm yet curious encounter, in the wake of Anthony’s sudden public prominence, with another Black curator, Danielle Harrington (Christiana Clark), or in the steadfast, anguished presence of Anthony’s mother, Anne-Marie (played, as in the 1992 film, by Vanessa Williams). The movie is at its strongest when DaCosta unleashes images of angular, rhythmic force, the most distinctive of which are inspired by scenes involving the movie’s primary visual metaphor, mirrors. In one scene, the famed comedic gesture of “Duck Soup”—two characters facing each other in a mirror, their gestures perfectly imitative—becomes a haunted, uncanny extravaganza. In another scene, of a high-risk confrontation, Brianna discovers the extraordinary practical implications of the legend’s monstrous power—and of her ability to control it.

Yet for all its symbolic heft and keen-eyed flair, there’s a scattershot quality to “Candyman” that has to do with the seemingly inescapable demands of its genre source. The horror-film combination of constrained tautness and calculated gore keeps some of the themes from fully developing and leaves narrative loose ends dangling. A movie about an artist inevitably reflects back on the artists who made it; in the new “Candyman,” the effect is doubled by the presence of two artists in the story, and doubled again by the central significance of mirrors. But DaCosta’s sharp-edged and inventive direction doesn’t cut loose with the furious subjectivity and specificity that her mighty subjects demand. Even the film’s extreme subjective touches come off as somewhat abstract and impersonal. Its self-questioning of the demands and the dangers of artistic politics doesn’t quite bend the mirror all the way back to see behind the camera. Nonetheless, the film’s teeming speculative imagination, finely stylized detail, and hectic sense of urgency suggest the unbearably distant resolutions to the ongoing crises of racial politics in America and the destructive pressures that they inflict, including on the artistic conscience. It’s a work of vigorous, furious pessimism.

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The new Candyman was modernized for the wrong audience

It’s cluttered, preachy, and not nearly scary enough

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Nia DaCosta’s Candyman , the repetitive, superficial fourth entry in the horror franchise, is set in Chicago, the same city where Bernard Rose’s original 1992 version of Candyman began the saga by exploring the connection between mythology, urban legends, and anti-Black violence. Those themes haven’t abated since Rose’s film hit theaters — they’ve only intensified. But the new version muddles them, with flat social commentary, and even flatter horror thrills.

DaCosta’s version opens in 1977, as an echoed, haunting rendition of Sammy Davis Jr.’s signature song, “The Candy Man,” jangles. The camera peers over the Cabrini-Green row houses, the infamous housing projects located auspiciously on the city’s affluent north side. The police are patrolling for a local murderer, a Black man with a hook attached to his arm. He’s been accused of putting razor blades in candy and giving it to children, hurting a young white girl in the process.

The residents, including a young Black boy heading to a basement laundry room, avoid the cops who are patrolling for him. The racial dynamics at play, and the overpoliced location, make the situation ripe for trouble. Similar to Rose’s film, DaCosta uses the racial dynamics of Cabrini-Green to set up a story about white-inflicted racial violence, the ways white folks encroach on Black spaces, and the harm that an overzealous police force and apathetic government can cause to neglected Black people.

Several rounds of Black Lives Matter protests and the proliferation of videos capturing Black death at police hands have crystallized Rose’s film as a fantastical folkloric horror, a palpable parable of Black reality, set on a forsaken side of town. DaCosta is the recipient of those themes, responsible for translating them into a story that fits the present racial environment. But her Candyman is a confused, overstuffed web of shallowly presented ideas, including critiques of gentrification and the white critical lens, and a request for Black liberation.

After the flashback opening, DaCosta’s Candyman jumps to the present day, where Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a noted visual artist, carries out a chemistry-free relationship with art-gallery director Brianna (Teyonah Parris). Lately, Anthony has been in a creative rut. His previous series of paintings, featuring Black men with nooses draped over their necks and bare chests, is now old news. But then Brianna’s brother (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) tells Anthony the legend of Candyman, in a campfire story that sums up the events of the 1992 film: Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) ventured to Cabrini-Green and kidnapped a Black baby, but died in a bonfire. Anthony, who connects with Black pain on a shallow level, exploiting it for personal fame, decides to make Cabrini-Green his next subject.

This won’t be the only time we hear of Candyman’s legend: How you need only to say his name five times in a mirror to call him, or how his story traces back to the late 1800s, when a lynch mob captured him for fathering a child with a white woman. They cut off his arm, covered him with honey, and unleashed a swarm of bees to kill him. While viewers who haven’t watched the 1992 film will probably need this refresher on its plot, DaCosta’s sequel recounts the events of the prior film no less than three times, making its 90-minute runtime terribly distributed.

Each iteration of the retelling uses the same visual style, with bewitching silhouette images from real-life painter Kara Walker , who makes miniature black cutouts of people to convey the legend. In the beginning, this motif offers a captivating storytelling method, marrying the origin of myths with the idea of shadows on a cave wall. But DaCosta hits that well one too many times, and on each successive deployment, the strategy is less intriguing, mostly because there’s little meaning behind the aesthetic choice. While Walker’s art often interrogates the past, disrupting the romanization of America’s racial fairytale and the idea of a grand melting pot , the redundant retelling blunts the intended depth of her work.

That’s a general problem with the script, written by Jordan Peele , Win Rosenfeld, and DaCosta: Candyman is so message-driven that it flattens into a generic fable. During his research, McCoy ventures to Cabrini-Green, traversing through the nearly abandoned row houses. He meets William Burke (Colman Domingo), not only one of the area’s last residents, but a totem for the hurt and sense of abandonment felt by the city’s terrorized Black folks.

Domingo does some Herculean heavy lifting as William. He’s speaking for this community, and in a sense, almost every African-American urban neighborhood, when he tells McCoy about seeing a Black man wrongly accused of being Candyman, and beaten to death by police. Domingo nearly pulls it off, imbuing an agony and hidden rage within William that isn’t totally fleshed out in this withered script.

DaCosta’s previous film, Little Woods , was lived-in and detailed because she used the rugged landscape as an extension of her characters. In Candyman , Cabrini-Green isn’t as well-leveraged. Viewers who have never been to Chicago may not know the geographical importance of Cabrini-Green: The housing project bordered the Gold Coast, one of the city’s luxe neighborhoods. Barring a brief shot of Chicago’s glittering downtown skyline, which backgrounds the row houses, DaCosta’s film doesn’t work to convey that economic disparity, and why the city desperately wants to gentrify the former projects to make room for more luxury housing.

Today, those row houses are the last remnants of Cabrini-Green — the brick towers shown in Rose’s film were demolished in 2011. Those abandoned homes still hold a foreboding, from the memories of police brutality that scar the landscape, and the generations of Black folks who once dwelled in the complex. But DaCosta’s film doesn’t convey any of that, because she barely filmed in the neighborhood.

The lack of a visual metaphor makes the film’s exploration of gentrification more of an assemblage of nonspecific dialogue. It talks about what gentrification is, and not what it looks like. The same can be said of the movie’s kills, which are less propelled by plot, and more message-driven. There’s plenty of blood-spewing and bone-cracking, but with no sense of the terror lurking in the shadows, or the foreboding behind the walls.

The movie also delves into body horror, while exploring the obsessive sacrifice artists make for their art. After Anthony is stung by a bee, a rash develops on his hand, slowly causing his skin to itch and peel. His burst of neurotic creativity coincides with the deterioration of his body. The practical makeup work here is highly effective and gruesome, as is Abdul-Mateen II’s cowering performance. During this period, McCoy produces a plethora of pieces centering Black death. Much of it is rote, because he’s exploiting Black folks’ shared historical pain in a shallow manner. A white art critic who isn’t impressed with his work sees a different repetition, one about Black artists perpetually crying about gentrification. She’s totemic of an ignorant white-centered critical lens, but DaCosta’s critique of that lens isn’t very interesting, or connected to the overarching narrative.

Like Anthony, DaCosta struggles to craft art that isn’t wholly informed by the past. From Anthony listening to Helen’s audiotapes to other visual motifs — like a hole in the wall behind a mirror — this film is filled with copious references to the prior Candyman entries. But what story does DaCosta want to tell? If this is a movie about the legend of Candyman, then why is he no more than an underutilized boogeyman? If this is about the residents of Cabrini-Green, then why not feature them or the area more heavily? Vanessa Estelle Williams reprises her role from the 1992 film, and considering the rich depth of her backstory — in the first movie, her baby was kidnapped by Candyman — it’s a wonder why this story wasn’t centered on her.

Like Anthony, DaCosta seems to want to say something substantial with her work. Her Candyman makes broad metaphorical strokes about the larger urban Black experience, but it’s aimed at an oblivious audience that needs didactic storytelling to understand racial politics. The film’s end is particularly muddled, doing more to set up a sequel than to smartly bind together Candyman ’s varied, nascent themes. The film is missing out on a cohesive vision, to the point where the audience will spend the entire film waiting for the flashbacks and summaries to end, and for DaCosta’s movie to finally begin. But by the end, she’s only offered a visually stunning homage to the original film. For a director of her talent, that isn’t enough.

Peele’s own directorial work tends to explore fraught social issues on a subtler level than this, but the other projects he’s backed — Twilight Zone , Lovecraft Country , and Hunters — have been underwhelming because they approach their subjects with suffocating bluntness. DaCosta’s Candyman , a sequel clearly filmed by a director with only a cursory knowledge of Chicago, a lesser understanding of the ways legends haunt us, and an unevenness for looping frights in with social commentary, is bold in its ambition. DaCosta tries to pay tribute to a classic horror film while upping the ante of that film’s social conversations, but she follows in the same disappointing steps of Peele’s other produced projects. She doesn’t have the voice required to approach these issues with depth.

Candyman debuts in theaters on August 27.

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Candyman Is a Soulless, Didactic Reimagining

It’s a familiar scenario rippling through history: White people turned on, revved up, and outright libidinal in the face of Black suffering and Black death. In this case, the scenario involves a curator and the nominally alternative assistant he’s sleeping with, who speaks in Joy Division lyrics and clichés. They’re in a slick but tinny art gallery, after hours, somewhere in Chicago’s West Loop, although there is nothing here that would cue you to the midwestern location. She buckles him to her belt. They kiss and grind against each other with sloppy hunger in front of a small mirror as the hushed lighting of the gallery flicks between cherry red, icy blue, and the cool gray of projected images. But it isn’t just any mirror. It’s an art piece by Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) that, when opened, reveals paintings representing in blunt terms police violence and lynchings, in which Black people turn into Black bodies to be filed away.

The mirror is an invitation for horror and transformation, potential all mirrors carry. “Candyman,” she says between kisses, speaking the name of an urban legend, bringing it into reality. She repeats the name, the invocation, this spell, a total of five times. It’s then that a figure can be glimpsed in the corner of the mirror. A hulking Black man with a hook for a hand and features that remain in shadow. With a single stroke, seen only in the glass and not in the flesh, this supernatural figure slits the woman’s throat. “Is this real?” her confused partner heaves as he holds onto her body, blood springing from her jugular in a swift arc. He tries to escape the same fate, at the hand of a killer whose visage ripples across reflective surfaces. There’s slit throats, concussed heads, ripped tendons, and copious amounts of blood in the scene, yet it fails to pierce the skin of the viewer. The timing is off. The gore is too deliberately placed to carry the fury necessary. There is no tension, no artistry, no silken grace nor grimy texture to be found. It’s glossy to the point of being featureless. Like the film it’s housed in, this scene glides over intriguing ideas — the white desire born from witnessing Black suffering — but never grapples with the full weight of them.

It’s hard to parse exactly what went so wrong without knowing details about the production of Candyman, the Nia DaCosta–helmed and Jordan Peele–co-written continuance/reimagining of the 1992 film of the same name. The trailers and marketing held so much promise, the tagline “Say His Name” evoking history and communal fury. (We said “Say her name” about Breonna Taylor before her image appeared on glossy magazine covers, fuel for a capitalist system that betrayed her and her memory.) But as the art-gallery scene demonstrates, this Candyman misunderstands the allure of the original and has nothing meaningful to say about the contemporary ideas it observes with all the scrutiny of someone rushing through a Starbucks order on their way to work. Candyman is the most disappointing film of the year so far, limning not only the artistic failures of the individuals who ushered it to life, but the artistic failures of an entire industry that seeks to commodify Blackness to embolden its bottom line.

The ’92 Candyman, written and directed by Bernard Rose, is an unnerving, sometimes outright frightening masterwork. Based on a story by Clive Barker, who also is responsible for the source material of the Hellraiser films, the film effortlessly blends eroticism with the macabre. While Virginia Madsen plays the lead, an ingratiating, ambitious graduate student Helen Lyle, it’s Tony Todd as the titular villain that proves to be a crucial reason for why the film endures. Yes, its interrogation of Chicago’s history with gentrification remains vital and fascinating. Yes, the kills are well-paced and evocative. Yes, the production design is dense and sensual. But Todd’s magnetic performance beckons and beguiles. His Candyman, while brutal, is also seductive. He doesn’t so much say Helen’s name but purrs it, drawing out vowels and consonants until they have a music of their own. He glides as he walks. His gaze is direct. He isn’t a simple slasher or wisecracking murderer — he’s an emblem of all that America loves to forget: the blood and bodies necessary to keep the lie of the American dream alive.

But there’s also a contradiction to this Candyman. He gets his power from the perpetuation of his legend, which requires fresh kills. Yet why would the vengeful spirit of a Black man — Daniel Robitaille, a painter and son of a slave, who fell in love and got a white woman pregnant, and who was then beaten and tortured, his hand sawn off, slathered in honey, stung by bees, and set on fire, all on the land that would become Chicago’s infamous Cabrini–Green projects — choose to terrorize Black people so viciously? Maybe he’s an equal-opportunity killer, but there’s something about this logic that’s always snagged me. DaCosta, Peele, and their collaborators seemingly sought to iron out this contradiction. 2021’s Candyman is not just the spirit of Todd’s Daniel Robitaille but of an entire legion of Black men killed viciously by white, state violence, who act as vengeful spirits more keen to harm white folks than the Black folks whose land their spirits are now tied to. (The film contradicts its own logic, though, when one of the Candymen kills a dark-skinned Black girl in flashback.) Instead of a suave yet brutalizing sole figure haunting your every moment, these Candymen are nowhere to be seen in the flesh, only in the mirrors used to summon them, perhaps a spiritual echo to Ralph Ellison’s work. Something is lost without a figure like Todd, but the ideas here have merit, if only the artists involved had an inkling for what to do with them.

Anthony McCoy (a surprisingly deadened Abdul-Mateen) is the picture of what has been largely marketed as Black excellence. He lives in the slick high-rises that have replaced Cabrini–Green’s projects with his assimilationist art-curator girlfriend, Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris). He’s hungry and desperate for new material. He was once considered the “great Black hope of the Chicago art scene,” which he’d like to remain. When he’s told the legend of Helen Lyle — rendered here in cutouts and shadow play that feel more inventive than anything else in the film, but too haphazardly deployed to fully capture the viewer — by Brianna’s brother, Troy (a grating Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), Anthony finds himself tumbling down a dark path. He may be an artist, but his story is clearly mapped onto Helen’s. He moves like her — an interloper and anthropologist picking over the remains of other people’s lives. Although the only actual poor character you hear from in this story rooted in the Cabrini–Green community is William (a jittery, arch Colman Domingo), whose younger self appears in flashbacks at different points of the film.

After getting a bee sting at the site of the Cabrini–Green projects, it isn’t just Anthony’s mind that unravels as he descends further and further into the folklore of Candyman, but his body too. The sting becomes a wound that oozes and crackles, traveling up his arm until he’s covered in stings. If you know the original, it becomes clear long before any “twist” that this film isn’t a reimagining so much as a remixed continuation. Sometimes the film dips into Brianna’s point of view as she grapples with the discovery of bodies at the art gallery, reminding her of the trauma of witnessing her schizophrenic father’s death by suicide (a detail that feels copy-and-pasted from an earlier version of the script rather than fully integrated into this story). But such a scattered approach is hemmed in by Parris herself — a stunning woman but a middling actress that DaCosta fails to shape well. (Parris will be directed by DaCosta again in the behemoth Captain Marvel sequel, The Marvels , which is only the director’s third film.)

Candyman lacks energy and inventiveness. Its screenplay is remarkably didactic, showing that it was intended neither for an audience of diehard horror fans nor Black people. Every intriguing plot point — the Candy men , the Invisible Man ethos — is squandered by pedestrian direction, facile thought, and a craven commodification of Blackness. In trying to reckon with the contradictions of the ’92 film, as well as carve out their own work, DaCosta and her collaborators have created a misfire that can’t make its tangle of politics — about gentrification, the Black body (horror), racism, white desire — feel either relevant or provocative. When Blackness is whittled down, this is the kind of poor cultural product we are sold.

Candyman tells you loudly from the jump what it thinks you should hear. “White people built the ghetto then erased it when they realized they built the ghetto,” Brianna says, with all the finesse of a first rehearsal. At another point, William tells Anthony, “They love what we make but not us.” Such lines aren’t only dry as hell, they’re a tell. The film can’t run from the fact that it was created with a white audience in mind, full of explanations and blunt language for things Black people already understand on a molecular level.

There’s another strange line, uttered by a white art critic cruelly and stereotypically judging Anthony’s work at the gallery. “It speaks in didactic media clichés about the ambient violence of the gentrification cycle,” she says. “Your kind are the real pioneers of that cycle.” When Anthony asks who the hell she’s referring to, she counters, “Artists.” It’d be one thing if DaCosta left that commentary there, but it becomes a through-line where Black gentrifiers are equated with white ones, as if they hold the same sort of power to alter their surroundings and flatten the culture of a place and community. In making Anthony’s story so much like Helen’s — to the point that he almost retraces her journey, even listening to her old recordings about the communal need for folklore to explain the violence of their lives in Cabrini–Green — the film treads queasy territory. Helen was a tourist and Anthony is positioned as one too, even though by the end of the film it is evident he isn’t that so much as an unaware prodigal son returning home. This is the molten core of the film — confused politics intertwined with juvenile artistry in which a meaningful conversation about gentrification is imagined without the prominent voices of those harmed by it.

Horror has always been political, best when it lets images and characters and sonic dimensions speak to a certain work’s integral concerns. But Candyman moves in a way that speaks to this moment in both Black filmmaking in Hollywood and the so-called “prestige” horror boom, in which its creators can’t find a political message they won’t hit you over the head with until you’re as bloody and begging for release as the characters onscreen. If the original heaves and breathes with ripe contradictions and precise aesthetic compositions, DaCosta’s sputters and fizzles.

And how in the hell do you make Yahya Abdul-Mateen II uncharismatic? I’ve complained about the lack of potent talent in the younger crop of actors on the come up in Hollywood before, most of whom have graduated from the Go Girl Give Us Nothing School of Acting. Abdul-Mateen isn’t one of them. He’s a force, and not just because he is traffic-stopping fine as hell — a fact the filmmakers realize, granting us a multitude of shots of Yahya rocking little beyond a pair of boxers. On paper, casting Abdul-Mateen makes a lot of sense. His booming voice, physical presence, and training make him a worthy heir to Todd. But the script and direction fail him repeatedly, leading to a remarkably thinly drawn performance showcasing no interior life, which further hobbles the unearned closing of the film. The film postures as if it wants to critique the ways Black trauma is commodified and made successful in the realm of art, then does the very same thing. When it needs to demonstrate Anthony’s mental unraveling, the film calls upon clichés about mad geniuses. Black people are continuously vexed by inner and outer forces, which makes the braiding together of Black madness and horror written upon a Black man’s body so apt. But in Candyman, madness is prosaic. It’s a spectacle — all tongues lolling, eyes wild — not a lived experience. In Candyman , the filmmakers are interested in the Black body but not the soul and mind that animates it.

Specificity, particularly in a film such as this, isn’t just about a people, but a place. And Chicago is essential to the Candyman story. The image of its downtown skyline juxtaposed with the rot of remaining slums is a visual tic the film relies on but doesn’t rightfully build upon. At one point, a haughty Truman Capote–looking art purveyor dubs the city “provincial,” which wouldn’t be so annoying if it were clear the filmmakers disagreed. Candyman ’s Chicago is wiped of the down-home rhythms, vernacular, and stylings that make it distinct. The city is rendered here as nowhere, New York lite — all primarily anonymous skyscrapers and interiors. Like so much in the film, geography is hampered by poor framing, pacing, tension, narrative evolution, and color-palette choices by DaCosta, cinematographer John Guleserian, and editor Catrin Hedström. A film such as this should grab hold of your heart, make your skin prickle, cause you to sit at the edge of your seat in panicked fascination. Instead, it glides over you like water rushing over a passing pebble, leaving little mark at all, save for when the didacticism sets in again.

At this point, we need to have a conversation about Jordan Peele’s creative efforts outside of his direction, which I’m admittedly cool on. Between producing the abominable Twilight Zone refashioning and the sloppy and at times offensive Lovecraft Country , and having a hand in writing Candyman , it’s clear that Peele knows a lot about the genres he’s moving through but lacks the ability to bring them to life with the vigor and talent necessary. For her part, DaCosta did indeed demonstrate a steadiness and emotional curiosity in her 2018 debut film Little Woods . It made me eager to see where she would go. But in Candyman, there’s not a trace of DaCosta’s voice, let alone that of any vibrant artist with a sure perspective. It’s perhaps a result of studios catapulting fresh talent from small independent pictures to bigger IP-related projects, skipping the now-nonexistent mid-budget work where stars were traditionally made and directors honed their vision. Candyman augurs Hollywood’s bleak future and what works it will green-light, especially from Black artists. There’s an added edge to how studios seek to commodify Blackness and, in a marked change from previous decades, how Black directors are hired to do it. Here, our feverish desire for change, encouraged by the uprisings of last year, is sanded off and resold as progress for the price of a movie ticket.

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Candyman Reviews

Tony Todd's performance and the Philip Glass score set the film apart from similar slashers, but it serves more as an effective compilation of scenes as opposed to an entirely satisfying full-length narrative.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 24, 2023

Candyman is perfectly shot, and its central characters are iconic.

Full Review | Aug 21, 2023

Candyman’s commentary on race remains just as riveting as it was thirty years ago, and its mix of fantastical and familiar horrors haunts audiences to this day.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 1, 2022

Candyman explicitly becomes a horror story about the power and fascination of horror stories.

Full Review | Jun 7, 2022

Todd knows the perfect way to use his towering build and basso voice to intimidate and seduce. He embodies the sex & death hallmark of all Clive Barkers work better than any other actor ever has. It is, quite simply, a great performance.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 20, 2022

Still something of a classic, thanks largely to Tony Todd’s grand performance in the title role, literally a tortured artist out for vengeance.

Full Review | Mar 17, 2022

Candyman's lasting greatness lies in its richness as a readable text and its ability to stoke our desire to keep finding new interpretations - even if its relevance continues to develop in disturbing ways.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 17, 2022

Tony Todd shot to international stardom in this Chicago-based horror hit...

Full Review | Nov 2, 2021

...one of the smarter, more cerebral horror films on the block...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 31, 2021

A topical and prescient adaptation of Clive Barker's short story "The Forbidden", Candyman will stick with you long after the credits roll.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 30, 2021

The film not only gave us Tony Todd's dulcet-toned titular character, it attempted to tackle race, class inequality and gentrification in a progressive way - at a time when it wasn't fashionable. Plus (spoiler) Helen is the real villain of the piece

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 27, 2021

There's enough full-bore gore to satisfy genre fans, but not so much that it obliterates the movie's flashes of savage wit and crafty intelligence.

Full Review | Aug 25, 2021

A chilly, bloody, romantic, and intelligent slice of horror that stands as a modern classic of the genre.

Full Review | Aug 8, 2021

Wonderfully playing against expectation, Candyman leaves you wondering where the story will go next, something missing in most horror movies.

Full Review | Jan 13, 2021

...the Tony Todd-starring classic from 1992 was something else.

Full Review | Nov 6, 2020

If the movie has a White lens, it at least makes room for a Black side-eye.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 2, 2020

The premise is highly original, the atmosphere terrifying, and the acting superb, especially considering the subgenre and its popularity for poor performances.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Sep 11, 2020

Candyman is creepy without relying heavily on the elements that have always turned me away from horror... building a sense of foreboding atmosphere with the help of an incredibly chilling score by Phillip Glass.

Full Review | Aug 18, 2020

The drama in its story is put before its horror ingredients, making it one of the best films around. It's a psychological horror film with captivating social commentary.

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Mar 6, 2020

The movie soon enough abandons this interesting and original direction, detouring back onto familiar horror movie ground.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 4, 2020

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Common sense media reviewers.

Update on classic horror tale is both scary and important.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

It may take more than one viewing to grasp all the

Some characters have achieved success, but no one

Positive representation of Black characters, showi

Lots of blood and gore. Characters sliced up with

A couple kiss and cuddle affectionately. Shirtless

Frequent strong language includes "f--k," "s--t,"

Mentions of Zillow, Whole Foods.

Adults drink wine socially, at dinner. Drinking be

Parents need to know that Candyman is a follow-up (but not a reboot or a direct sequel) to the 1992 movie, which was based on Clive Barker's short story. Directed by Nia DaCosta and co-written and co-produced by Jordan Peele, the movie takes a progressive approach to themes raised in the original -- including…

Positive Messages

It may take more than one viewing to grasp all themes raised, from gentrification to artistic appropriation, as well as concept of continuing to tell stories to keep discourse alive. Art (and movies) are extremely powerful, can be easily corrupted, the movie seems to be saying -- but keep "telling everyone."

Positive Role Models

Some characters have achieved success, but no one is a clear role model. Most fall victim to supernatural events around them in one way or another.

Diverse Representations

Positive representation of Black characters, showing both successes and trials. Characters are realistic and three-dimensional. Supporting cast includes a loving, mixed-race LGBTQ+ couple. A White art critic tries to tell Anthony's story and define his art through her own experiences, which is clearly meant to be problematic.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Lots of blood and gore. Characters sliced up with a hook, killed. Throat slashed. Blood spurts, pools of blood. Bloody carnage. Broken limbs. Strangling. Stabbing. Shooting. Gross hand wound spreading up arm, picking at icky scab, fingernail rotting, peeling off. Child witnesses her father dying via suicide, jumping from high window. Hand sawed off, hook jammed into bloody stump. Finger sliced by razor blade. Arguing. Character smashes mirrors. Broken mirror shards in hand. Scary stuff. Jump scares.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A couple kiss and cuddle affectionately. Shirtless male. Passionate kissing/foreplay. Strong sex-related dialogue.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Frequent strong language includes "f--k," "s--t," "motherf----r," "bulls---," "a--hole," the "N" word," "ass," "bitch," and "d--k," and "Jesus" as an exclamation.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Adults drink wine socially, at dinner. Drinking beer at gallery opening. Brief pot smoking. Character briefly drinks alone.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Candyman is a follow-up (but not a reboot or a direct sequel) to the 1992 movie , which was based on Clive Barker's short story. Directed by Nia DaCosta and co-written and co-produced by Jordan Peele , the movie takes a progressive approach to themes raised in the original -- including the power of art and storytelling -- and it's both scary and thought-provoking. It has tons of blood and gore, with several killings. Expect to see stabbing, strangling, shooting, throat slashing, broken limbs, jump scares, a gross hand wound creeping up to the rest of the body, a child watching her father die via suicide (jumping from a high window), and more. There's kissing (both affectionate and passionate), cuddling, and interrupted foreplay; a man is shown without his shirt on. Language is very strong, with uses of "f--k," "s--t," the "N" word, and more. Adults drink socially and smoke pot. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (7)
• Kids say (9)

Based on 7 parent reviews

What's the Story?

In CANDYMAN, Anthony McCoy ( Yahya Abdul-Mateen II ) is an up-and-coming artist who's living with Brianna Cartwright ( Teyonah Parris ), an art curator. At dinner one night, Brianna's brother, Troy ( Nathan Stewart-Jarrett ), tells the story of Candyman, who terrorized the nearby Cabrini Green housing projects years ago. Inspired, Anthony looks into the story further, hoping to create a new series of artworks. Then Anthony meets William Burke ( Colman Domingo ), who grew up in Cabrini Green and had an encounter with the actual Candyman, and learns more. Unfortunately, as Anthony's art is shown to the world, the Candyman legend is reawakened, with horrific results.

Is It Any Good?

Neither a reboot nor a direct sequel, Nia DaCosta 's horror movie responds to elements from the 1992 cult classic and moves forward into the Black Lives Matter era, with chilling, brilliant results. Following up on the promise of her powerful debut Little Woods , DaCosta's Candyman -- with help from co-writer and co-producer Jordan Peele -- follows a bracingly logical path through Clive Barker's original 1985 short story and Bernard Rose's 1992 movie, taking the urban setting and the Black monster (played here, as in three other movies, by Tony Todd ) and examining them further. With swift strokes, like an artist passionately wielding a paintbrush, DaCosta touches on gentrification, artistic appropriation, and artistic objectivity in fascinating ways.

Using silhouette puppets to illustrate flashbacks and a musical score that echoes Philip Glass's 1992 recordings, the movie asks: Are these artists actual creators, or are they merely repeating history? How does location play into the identities of Black residents, especially when that location was designed and built by White people? Can Black people reclaim their own stories? In one striking subplot, a White art critic tries to tell Anthony's story and define his art through her own experiences. Yet in the midst of these and other timely discourses, Candyman manages to be a brutal and powerful horror tale (right from the start, with its mirror-image studio logos), perhaps even surpassing whatever Barker's original story, or any other adaptation, has ever intended or achieved. A final cry to keep telling stories -- rather than burying them, as in the Tulsa massacre of 1921 -- is an imperative crossover from horror to real life.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Candyman 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

Is the movie scary? What's the appeal of scary movies ? Why do people sometimes like to be scared?

What does the final message, "tell everyone," mean? What other messages do you think the film is trying to convey about art, race, and identity? The filmmakers have put together resources and organizations that support racial justice and healing; click here to learn more.

Why do you think the movie is set in the art world? How much art is created, and how much is "borrowed" from other places? What does this all mean? What does it mean for a movie called Candyman ?

How does this film compare to the other movies in the Candyman series, and to the original story?

Movie Details

• In theaters : August 27, 2021
• On DVD or streaming : September 16, 2021
• Cast : Yahya Abdul-Mateen II , Teyonah Parris , Nathan Stewart-Jarrett
• Director : Nia DaCosta
• Inclusion Information : Female directors, Black directors, Black actors, Female actors
• Studio : Universal Pictures
• Genre : Horror
• Topics : Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires
• Run time : 91 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : bloody horror violence, and language including some sexual references
• Last updated : August 25, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Chris Pine's new movie Poolman received scathing reviews, but taught him 'resilience'

The writer-director-star says it's "the best thing that's ever happened to me."

Chris Pine 's movie Poolman hasn't hit theaters yet, but it has already received dismal reviews.

The film received a score of 21 percent, based on 33 reviews so far, from movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes . But Pine, the star of movies such as Star Trek , Wonder Woman , and Don't Worry Darling , said the experience was a valuable one; in fact, he called it "the best thing to ever happen to me," on Thursday's episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast hosted by Josh Horowitz.

Pine said the criticism was "a real come-to-Jesus moment for me, in terms of seeing how resilient I am."

The film, which costars veteran actors Danny DeVito and Jennifer Jason Leigh , is about an optimistic pool man in Los Angeles who wants to improve the city. Not only does Pine star in the film, but he wrote, produced, and directed it.

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So it must have been especially painful for him to read reviews that called his movie " an inside joke that never let its audience inside" and "an unfunny spoof of neo-noir thrillers with hazy direction, even messier storytelling, and unbearable dialogue."

"It's forced me to double down on joy. As an actor…fundamentally it's about play, right?" Pine said. "What we do is essentially become children for hours a day and make believe."

He said there's "an impish quality to it that I don't ever want to lose."

Pine premiered his film at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, and he immediately heard negative feedback.

"After the reviews in Toronto," he said, "I was like, maybe I did just make a pile of s---. So I went back and watched it, and I was like, I f---ing love this film. I love this film so much."

He learned a lesson, too: "How resilient I am."

Not that it's been easy.

"The closest thing I would imagine that this is like — co-writing, directing, and starring in — is a stand-up comedian on stage feeling utterly naked," Pine said.

He's even talked about it with his therapist.

"In everything that feels like a setback, yes there is the hurt of the cut, but as the scar tissue forms and the healing process happens you do benefit from a growth in resilience," the actor noted.

In a Role Call interview with Entertainment Weekly (above), Pine explains that he had the idea for the movie about five years ago. First came the movie title, followed by the details of the character, including his name, Darren Barrenman. He found his inspiration for the character's look in California.

"I was in Joshua Tree, and I was trying to think about, like, 'What does this guy look like?' And I was standing in line for a coffee, and I saw this rock climber, and I was like, 'That’s the guy," Pine says. "And he looked like this '70s dirtbag hippie, and I was like, 'Ah, absolutely. Everything about this guy.'"

Poolman arrives in theaters Friday.

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'New Life' Review - This Horror-Thriller Has a Twist You Won't See Coming

• New Life is a bold movie that offers a fresh take on overused tropes.
• The film explores themes of solidarity, adversity, and the power of hope in the face of chaos.
• New Life skillfully uses contemporary concerns, such as corporate greed and cyber surveillance, to enhance its background story and add depth to its thriller narrative.

This review was originally part of our coverage for the 2023 Fantasia International Film Festival.

New Life is a genre-bending movie that defies simple definitions. At first, writer-director John Rosman 's feature debut presents itself as an engaging cat and mouse game played by Sonya Walger and Hayley Erin that doesn't seem like it will add something new to spy thriller conventions. As it turns out, though, that's part of New Life 's charm, with big second-act revelations pushing Rosman's feature straight into horror territory and changing the story’s stakes. While getting into the major twist would completely spoil the film, it's worth noting how the filmmaker takes one of the most overused tropes in horror and approaches it from a new angle. That alone would make the movie a standout, but New Life has much more to offer .

The film opens with an image of a young woman covered in blood , sneaking through the streets of suburbia while constantly looking over her shoulder. The woman, Jessica (Erin), is being chased by people with guns, all dressed in suits. Her only chance to escape is to go North and do whatever she can to remain hidden until crossing the Canadian border and starting a new life for herself. While Jessica is on the run, Elsa (Walger) is ordered to take over the hunt for her. Once a prominent field agent, Elsa has been recently diagnosed with ALS, and her body is slowly refusing to respond to her will. She hides her condition from her colleagues and hopes that bringing Jessica in might help prove she can still do her job.

New Life (2023)

In a dramatic series, a recently widowed woman struggles to rebuild her life in a small coastal town where she finds new beginnings and complex relationships. As she connects with the local community, she discovers that healing comes in many forms and sometimes unexpected places.

Release Date June 3, 2024

Director John Rosman

Cast Cyndi Rhoads, Blaine Palmer, Ayanna Berkshire, Nick George, Hayley Erin, Betty Moyer, Tony Amendola, Sonya Walger

Runtime 85 Minutes

Main Genre Horror

Genres Thriller, Horror

Writers John Rosman

Studio(s) American Storyworks, Great Lakes Vacuum Supplies Unlimited

In Jessica’s segment of the story, New Life tells a tale of solidarity, as she is lucky to cross paths with people who offer help without expecting any explanations about her past. She’s then free to build something new after evading whoever's chasing her. Elsa’s story echoes that of Jessica, as the agent is forced to upend her life due to the limitations of ALS. So, on one level, Rosman’s movie is about the chaotic elements of life where everyone must choose how to deal with adversity either by embracing hope or giving in to despair. That theme is echoed throughout both main characters' storylines, as Jessica and Elsa fight to reclaim the life that has been taken from them , either by other people or by unfair diseases.

'New Life' Boasts a Pair of Excellent Performances

As a character-driven story, New Life can only work thanks to Eron's and Walger's commitment to their respective roles . Even as Jessica and Elsa are on opposite sides, they both have to deal with secrets and mistrust, which gets reflected in how they keep their pain concealed and hold everybody at arm's length. Eron and Walger help give both women emotional layers by using body language to convey the complex feelings they cannot talk about openly as we observe their reactions to curveballs that are thrown their way as the plot unfolds. Walger, in particular, helps give the ALS storyline more weight by masterfully capturing the frustration and fear that comes with the diagnosis while maintaining the facade of gritty antagonist that her hunter position demands. This offers audiences an intriguing drama, which improves when New Life plays with genre conventions to subvert expectations.

At first, New Life doesn’t explain why Jessica is running away , nor does it reveal who Elsa’s contractors are. All we know is that two women who never crossed paths before have their lives uprooted by the chase. This narrative framing allows audiences to explore each character’s internal struggle. In addition, the movie also makes a statement about the dangers of technology.

As Jessica travels the country, she must do so while avoiding electronics. Meanwhile, Elsa’s army of technicians scour the web for clues of her prey’s whereabouts. With dynamic editing that adds a welcome and fast-paced energy to Rosman's compelling direction, New Life uses images of surveillance cameras, official government transcripts, and social media to showcase the alarming web of cyber surveillance we are all trapped in. As much as Jessica wants to vanish, there are just too many digital footprints people can follow to learn more about her . There’s a never-ending flow of information surrounding human lives, making it almost impossible to believe privacy still exists when street cameras can track people’s every move without alerting them.

'New Life' Takes a Turn That Brings Everything Together

That scary thought elevates the classic woman-on-the-run film, painting a grim picture of the power wealthy companies can have over people’s lives. Once New Life reveals why Jessica is on the run, that message immediately underscores how corporate greed often gets in the way of individual safety and privacy, regardless of the dangers it presents to us. So, even though these themes are not the movie's main focus, Rosman's writing skillfully uses contemporary concerns to polish up New Life 's background story .

It would be a disservice to the film to comment on its genre-bending twist. Still, it’s important to emphasize how the horror elements introduced in the second act add to the tense atmosphere of the thriller, tying Jessica’s and Elsa’s personal journeys closer than either could have anticipated. Rosman’s script is also clever enough to avoid tonal dissonances by smoothly adding these new components without losing track of the main story, at least until the end. The third act of New Life could have been cleaner, as some of the plot points that come with the horror portion of the movie get in the way of the thoughtful exploration of ALS that the film does through Elsa. Even so, despite using genre conventions both for its thriller and the mysterious horror story layers, New Life feels fresh and innovative , presenting a mix that works so well that it’s a wonder no one ever tried to do something similar before.

New Life is a bold, genre-bending feature debut with excellent performances and great writing.

• The film provides a new take on a familiar story, upending our expectations in the best way.
• Sonya Walger and Hayley Erin each give great performances, providing emotional layers through every aspect of their body language.
• The twist brings everything into emotionally resonant focus, showing how our two characters were more similar than they were different.
• The third act could have been cleaner as certain horror developments don't always connect with the more thoughtful elements of the film.

New Life is now available to stream on VOD in the U.S.

WATCH ON VOD

Candyman Pizza

Hours updated 3 months ago

Popular dishes

Pepperoni Pizza

Candy Man Pizza

Meatball Pizza

Quattro Formaggi

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2347 Sheridan Dr

Tonawanda, NY 14150

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I was looking forward to their very tasty pizza, with a crisp crust and flavorful cup and Char pepperoni, but we noticed that the table next to us got two pizzas that they said they didn't order it was given to them by a different server than ours. So it took an extremely long time to get our pizza. Our server made up for it. It wasn't her fault. Bourbon bbq wings were also done on the pit and worth the wait.Thank you to our server.

Decided to give the pizza a try, it was decent, but didn't really hit the spot for me. I'd give a 3.5 if we could. The sauce was a little sweet for me, and it seemed like the flour used for the dough was maybe a mix that had some brown flour included? Just wasn't overall my taste. It was well cooked, and I like how much basil was on it as I feel some places skimp. As for the ambience, typical local WNY bar feel. People were really congregating near the entrance for some reason with their drinks, which was odd. I did take out as my normal place was closed at it was later in the evening, so can't comment too much on the service, but the pie was ready fast after I ordered and the person who was at the counter was pleasant. Overall I likely wouldn't return as as the flavor overall just wasn't my taste, but I can see why some people like it so much.

Margarita pizza

We orders a pepperoni pizza to go, by the time we picked it up and got home it was cold and we had to reheat which we wonder if this affected the quality. Even with the reheat this is a really good pizza, thin crust and very flavorful. The pies are small, bigger than an individual pizza but just enough for two to split and be full enough. We need to go back and try the pizza in house to compare and this might be close to a 5/5- will update when we try it !

Wow. What an amazing place. Went here twice in the last week because the pizza was so good. Ordered several different pies and wings and all were absolutely fantastic. The Candyman is a perfect wood fired pepperoni with that sweet heat of the hot honey added. For you ricotta, meat and hot banana pepper fans (one of my fav combos) the vodka 2.0 absolutely delivers. The loaded margherita was so unique and had the perfect ingredients of each topping on it. Mine and the tables favorite was the Quattro formaggi. So creamy and funky with the addition of blue cheese. Wings were cooked perfect. Went with the cattleman's and flaming garlic parm. Garlic parm are some of my go to wings but sometimes they lack flavor. I tend to drag them in a side of hot sauce when I order. These accomplished that with the sauce on them. Perfect amount of heat. Cattleman's were delicious if you like that flavor. Decor and atmosphere are very nice, and the tap list and mixed drink list has something for everyone. Owner Vinny and waitstaff were a 10/10. Our waiter was hustling all night and extremely attentive. If you haven't been here yet and have been eyeing it up, get here, you are not going to be disappointed.

Stop for a beer at caputi's and some candy man pizza and you won't be disappointed! Love their flavors. I personally love to get the white pizza and make it Jen style and add fig and prosciutto!

The first time we went the food was absolutely amazing, the service was beyond amazing, and the drinks were fantastic. Today, our pepperoni pizza was ridiculously overcooked, and our drinks were weak short pours. Our server was very sweet, but new. When she asked how dinner was, I said just this. She gave me a sad face and not a single manager even talked to us. I wasn't seeking anything free, but some acknowledgment that our $110 meal was not what it should have been would have been nice. At some point we'll be back, but it's going to be a while. I'm annoyed more by management's non-response than I am by the overcooked food and 1990's-style caputi's drink I paid $10 for. Had a manager acknowledged our complaint and had a conversation, I would have walked away satisfied. Now I'm wondering whether they are victims of too quick success, and are fading from belief what goes up does not go down. Tonight's dinner was like a 1.5 star, but our first time was 5. So I averaged and rounded to 3.

Came here for a special whiskey pairing dinner and had a great experience! The food was great. The pizza is brick oven style, and I really enjoyed both pizzas I tried (their cheese and pepperoni, and another with bacon, blue cheese(?), and walnuts). I also really enjoyed their salad and some fried appetizers they served. Drink selection was creative too. I ordered a loganberry cocktail which was delicious. They also have a bunch of beers to choose from as well. Service was fantastic too. Everyone was very friendly, drinks were made quickly, and food came out hot and often too. Cool atmosphere. Great place to hangout with a few friends, or enjoy a sit down pizza dinner.

Whiskey tasting event

Best pizza around. Can get backed up quite a bit if its busy so might not be best to go if you need a quick bite

I was looking for a pizza place in the area and found this place during a Google search. It was a weekday night around 8pm and there was only one other table there. We ordered our food, the menu isn't as inventive as I would have hoped, but we settled on two pizzas. What makes this place unique is the wall decor. Every wall has something different and are good conversation starters, but you can only talk for so long before you start to wonder " where is my food?" Perhaps, because this restaurant shares a space with a bar next door they supply the food for them, which is why our 2 small personal pan pizzas took nearly 90 minutes to arrive! Aside from the wait, the pizza was just okay. The bottom was burnt black on both of them we ate what we could. The dough was dull and the sauce was bland and really left nothing to the imagination. All and all I would come back perhaps for the trivia Night which they do have weekly or maybe if I just wanted beer and bar food. I hope the menu and the service improves! The concept is unique, but poor execution

Pepperoni pizza!

Not too bad! We got wings and pizza. Came out reasonably quick and the taste delivered. Great spot if you're looking for a quick bite in the area

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Review: In ‘Poolman,’ a familiar kind of laid-back L.A. sleuth rises to the occasion

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Chris Pine might love Los Angeles more than anyone else does. He also loves movies about Los Angeles, talking about movies about Los Angeles, going to the movies in Los Angeles and making movies about making movies in Los Angeles, which is all laid out in his affable directorial debut, “Poolman,” a love letter and homage to (and satire of) stoner L.A. noirs. Pine co-wrote the script with Ian Gotler and stars in the title role as goofy Darren Barrenman, a.k.a. DB, a slacker pool cleaner with eyes the same cerulean shade as the chlorinated body of water he tends to with an almost religious ecstasy.

This Ken ’s job is “pool,” and in “Poolman,” a riff on “Chinatown” that keeps announcing itself as such, DB has to follow the water. Our unlikely hero is the Dude from “The Big Lebowski” as a manic pixie dream boy, an effervescently charming and inexplicably quirky chap. With his willingness to be vulnerable, childlike enthusiasm and unique wardrobe, DB also calls to mind another memorable L.A. character: Pee-wee Herman .

DB lives in an RV in the courtyard of a downtrodden apartment complex, rattling off typewritten letters to Erin Brockovich and hanging with his motley crew of pals, including his therapist Diane (Annette Bening), documentary film collaborator Jack (Danny DeVito), girlfriend Susan (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and buddy and associate Wayne (John Ortiz). Together they ruminate about the good old days of L.A. when they’re not storming city council meetings with dramatic filibusters about bus schedules.

But this isn’t just another shaggy-dog hangout movie, showcasing Pine’s appreciation for classic movies, beloved actors, old-school L.A. restaurants, short shorts and silly hats. Enter the femme fatale at the edge of the pool. In a sculptural 1940s-inspired frock and hat, she is June Del Ray (DeWanda Wise), the assistant to the city council member (Stephen Tobolowsky) with whom DB is locked in a brutal yet banal battle. She tells DB she has dirt on her boss, who she says is collaborating in a shady real estate deal with a developer named Teddy Hollandaise (Clancy Brown). With a bat of her eyelashes, the poolman becomes a P.I.

“Poolman” is Pine’s guileless take on the movies that he name-checks throughout, like the frequently referenced “Chinatown” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” But it unfolds like more recent films such as “Inherent Vice” and “Under the Silver Lake” — self-conscious takes on L.A. noir that come with extra layers of existentialism and winking commentary. Pine seems less motivated to comment on the genre, just happy to be playing in the sandbox, flinging around the iconography, archetypes and extremely niche references.

The Achilles’ heel of “Poolman” is its tendency toward hyper-specific geographical jokes; it’s a bit too “inside baseball” to appeal to anyone outside of L.A. and sometimes feels like a feature-length version of the “Saturday Night Live” sketch “The Californians” (Pine’s long blond locks add to that sensation). The central mystery is flabby and uncompelling and it feels obligatory at best, a real estate scandal offering a loose background in front of which these actors play.

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And the best part of the movie is the cast. If Pine has great taste in anything, it’s actors. He’s assembled an ensemble that includes a superstar (Bening, having a ball), a comedic heavy-hitter (DeVito, spouting an almost nonstop monologue about parking and pie) and a group of character actors who always make you feel like you’re in safe, capable hands. Add to that a compelling ingenue (Wise) and at least one delightful weirdo (Ray Wise) and the film would be entertaining even if they just read the phone book.

Eventually, the plot twists spiral out of control, and it never quite feels like Pine and Gotler have control over this vehicle careening over the surface streets of our city. But there’s such a woo-woo warmth to the endeavor that it’s never an entirely unpleasant experience. Pine’s “Poolman” is sort of the physical, emotional and spiritual embodiment of Los Angeles itself: earnest, silly and a little (or a lot) ridiculous, but insistently charming if you decide to surrender to the experience.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

'Poolman'

Rating: R, for some language and brief sexuality Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes Playing: In limited release May 10

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The 10 Best So-Bad-They're-Good Horror Movies of the '90s, Ranked

"I'll get you, my pretty! And your little soul, too!"

To be a horror movie fan in the 1990s must have been truly spectacular. What a more fantastic time to flock to theaters than in the decade blessed by some of the most iconic and terrifying horror films . Whether it be Scream , Candyman , Army of Darkness , or The Silence of the Lambs , this decade was full of incredible chillers. While it can't be understated how important this time was to horror cinema, not all of these remarkable films are as highly regarded.

There's something unique about so-bad-they're-good horror movies in the '90s. There was an abundance of unintentionally hilarious horror comedies that have since become cult classics of the genre. They may have failed spectacularly at being scary, but these movies are so outlandish and amusing that they're impossible to ignore. Over time, they've slowly garnered cult followings, becoming something distinctive in the pop culture lexicon. From The Lawnmower Man to the infamous Troll 2 and beyond, these are the ten best so-bad-they're-good flicks any horror fan needs to see on their next '90s horror movie rewatch .

10 'The Lawnmower Man' (1992)

Directed by brett leonard.

Starring Jeff Fahey and Pierce Brosnan , The Lawnmower Man is a 1992 sci-fi horror thriller very loosely based on a short story by the famed horror author Stephen King . Taking the concept of science gone wrong to the world of virtual reality, it follows an ambitious scientist whose experiments to heighten cognitive behaviors go horribly out of control when his latest human test subject becomes a power-hungry genius with murderous tendencies.

Outside of the terrible CGI effects and hilarious overacting, there's much to be said about The Lawnmower Man . It's a poorly written, incoherent, comedic mess that tries and fails to explore the interesting themes of the corruption of power and the dangers of unchecked technology. Fahey and Brosnan give decent enough performances as the leads, but their combined forces can't help the awkward dialogue and overblown storytelling. Stephen King has famously distanced from The Lawnmower Man over the years. He's succeeded not once but twice in having his name removed from the promotional art due to the film having so little to do with his original short story.

The Lawnmower Man

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9 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation' (1995)

Directed by kim henkel.

Tobe Hooper 's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is widely regarded as one of the most influential slasher films of all time. The same can't be said about its unnecessary sequels, which range from semi-decent to downright terrible. Arguably, the weakest and most outrageous installment was The Next Generation , starring future Academy Award winners Matthew McConaughey and Renée Zellweger .

To say Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation is bizarre is an understatement. It's a bonkers horror comedy with over-the-top dialogue, cringey performances, and nonsensical storylines that go nowhere. It's hard not to laugh every time McConaughey graces the screen with his manic energy while playing the deranged Slaughter family member Vilmer. While not as good as Hooper's original, nor does it even come close, The Next Generation is a one-of-a-kind sequel that doesn't hold back on its ridiculousness and tells an amusing story that can't help but make someone laugh.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation

8 'freddy's dead: the final nightmare' (1991), directed by rachel talalay.

In the pre- Scream era of the early '90s, the slasher sub-genre was steadily losing momentum. Once popular '80s franchises like Halloween , Friday the 13th , and Hellraiser quickly dropped in quality as they kept churning out one critical and commercial flop after another. One of the most infamous examples of this decline was Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare , the supposedly final sequel to 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare is by no means the worst of the Nightmare franchise , but it sure isn't the most terrifying. It's a goofy, cartoonish, and uneven mess that feels more like a spoof than a proper sequel . While he's more effective as a terrifying dream demon, seeing the wonderful Robert Englund being a good sport is still fun as he plays a more outlandish version of Freddy Krueger, entertaining audiences with his impressive physical comedy and campy one-liners. Freddy's Dead is not scary, but it's hard not to laugh at some of its more ridiculous moments.

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare

7 'ice cream man' (1995), directed by norman apstein.

Whether it's Leprechaun , The GingerDead Man , or Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey , filmmakers sure know how to take any innocent subject and turn it into the basis of a slasher movie. Take Ice Cream Man , an outrageous 1995 dark comedy starring Clint Howard . When misbehaved children and older adults go missing around their neighborhood, a group of kids slowly suspect a local ice cream vendor is secretly a violent serial killer.

Ice Cream Man is all-in on its premise, promising to entertain horror fans, especially those looking for a goofy, gory time.

In what could have easily been a much more disturbing and dreary horror film, Ice Cream Man never takes itself seriously. Instead, it's an amusing and one-of-a-kind slasher parody with entertaining performances and over-the-top gore . Fans of splatter flicks like the cult classic Terrifier series will be delighted with how bloody and gross this film could get . Ice Cream Man is all-in on its premise, promising to entertain horror fans, especially those looking for a goofy, gory time.

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6 'Frankenhooker' (1990)

Directed by frank henenlotter.

From Frank Henenlotter , the unique mind behind some of the cheesiest '80s horror movies like Basket Case and Brain Damage , Frankenhooker is a hilarious 1990 dark comedy very loosely based on Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein novel. It follows a troubled medical student who, after losing his beloved fiancé in a freak accident, stalks the streets of New York in search of prostitutes to acquire the body parts needed to resurrect his bride back from the dead.

Frankenhooker is a wonderfully over-the-top and intentionally campy horror-comedy hybrid that goes full board with its absurdity and never lets up

With a wildly bizarre premise like that, there's no wonder why Frankenhooker has endured as a memorable cult classic all these years . It's a wonderfully over-the-top and intentionally campy horror-comedy hybrid that goes full board with its absurdity and never lets up. With spectacularly cheap effects, hammy performances, and clumsy dialog, Frankenhooker is an incredible horror comedy that needs to be seen to be fully appreciated.

5 'Anaconda' (1997)

Directed by luis llosa.

Regarding animal attack movies , most are usually hit-or-miss quality-wise. 1997's Anaconda isn't precisely best remembered for being a good horror movie, but it is still undeniably entertaining. Starring a memorable cast of likable stars, including Jon Voight , Jennifer Lopez , Ice Cube , and Owen Wilson , it follows a documentary film crew on a mission to shoot a remote indigenous tribe in the Amazon jungle. However, when they encounter a sinister snake poacher along the way, they become unwilling participants in his obsessed quest to hunt down a dangerous species of giant anacondas.

Anaconda was a hit at the box office upon release. Though critically panned for its admittedly terrible CGI creature effects, that hasn't diminished its strong cult following over the years. It's hard not to feel joy after watching this film, especially since it has so many iconic names attached to it. They all complement each other, and their hilarious performances have helped make Anaconda a notorious stand-out of the 1990s, and its terrible reputation will only keep increasing.

4 'Jack Frost' (1997)

Directed by michael cooney.

Not to be confused with Michael Keaton 's more child-friendly 1998 family film , Jack Frost is an atrocious 1997 slasher comedy starring Scott MacDonald , Christopher Allport , and Shannon Elizabeth in her film debut. It tells the story of a prolific serial killer who, after becoming exposed to genetic chemicals during a car crash on his way to being executed, finds his body infused with snow. Now, taking on the bizarre appearance of a snowman, he sets off on a violent rampage to hunt down the sheriff who put him away.

All it takes is one look at the film's titular snowy antagonist to make audiences burst at the seams with laughter. Jack Frost is a complete dumpster fire that is quite aware of how awful it is . With lackluster kills, abysmal performances, and an incredibly cheap-looking snowman costume, not one second of the film is genuinely well-made or put together. It's a one-of-a-kind, so-bad-it's-good horror film that can't be replicated but only gets funny the more people see it.

Jack Frost (1997)

3 'sleepwalkers' (1992), directed by mick garris.

Stephen King returns with another so-bad-it's-good horror cult classic, this time with 1992's Sleepwalkers , starring Brian Krause , Alice Krige , and Mädchen Amick . It follows a mother-son duo of supernatural shapeshifting monsters who coast from town to town, draining the life force out of young female victims. When they set their sights on a beautiful high schooler, one fatal mistake leads the two to go on a destructive rampage to collect her soul.

Many words can describe Sleepwalkers , except for terrifying and compelling. It's easily one of King's most infamous blunders, an unintentionally hilarious masterpiece featuring bizarre imagery, glorious over-the-top acting, and cartoonish kills. While Stephen King has done other incredible work , this laughable disaster is a stain on his prolific resumé that deserves to be seen by fans of his stories.

Sleepwalkers

2 'leprechaun 4: in space' (1996), directed by brian trenchard-smith.

The Leprechaun series is a mindless, fun, slasher franchise that knows how ridiculous it is. While each entry could make anyone's so-bad-it's-good horror movie list, the fourth installment, Leprechaun 4: In Space , truly goes all out with the absurdity. Set in the distant future, it follows the titular Leprechaun ( Warwick Davis ) on a wacky space adventure as he finds himself wreaking havoc aboard a marine starship in search of his bride-to-be, Princess Zarina ( Rebecca Carlton ).

Leprechaun 4: In Space is the perfect schlocky slasher flick that doesn't require much attention to leave viewers in stitches.

It doesn't take much thought to enjoy Leprechaun 4: In Space . It's pure mindless entertainment featuring atrocious acting and embarrassing special effects . It has nothing going right with its nonsensical plot; the titular Leprechaun is never mentioned by name, only being referred to as a demon or alien, meaning there was no reason to make it a Leprechaun film in the first place. It fails spectacularly in every way to a proper horror, but that was never its intention. Leprechaun 4: In Space is the perfect schlocky slasher flick that doesn't require much attention to leave viewers in stitches.

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1 'Troll 2' (1990)

Directed by claudio fragasso.

Anyone who is a fan of so-bad-they're-good horror movies knows this infamous masterpiece of schlock cinema that is widely considered one of the greatest bad movies of all time . Yes, it's Troll 2 , directed by Italian filmmaker Claudio Fragasso . Centering around the vacationing Waits family and a few of their friends, it follows the group as they have a deadly encounter with a bizarre magical race of forest-dwelling goblins who intend to eat them by turning them all into plants.

It doesn't get much better (or worse) than Troll 2 . It's the Citizen Kane of terrible movies, an absolute triumph of mediocrity and one of the most recognizable films for all the wrong reasons. From the hilarious dialog to the incredibly hammy performances, virtually every moment of every scene has solidified the film's infamous popularity over the years. Besides T ommy Wiseau 's The Room , nothing can top Troll 2 in terms of quality bad entertainment.

NEXT: The 10 Best So-Bad-They're-Good Fantasy Movies of the '90s, Ranked

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‘Poolman’ Review: In the Sun Too Long

Chris Pine’s shaggy debut feature has a charismatic cast that rambles along with him on a Los Angeles detective adventure.

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By Nicolas Rapold

In “Poolman,” Chris Pine’s debut feature, he plays Darren, a distractible pool cleaner who becomes an amateur detective when he learns of a municipal conspiracy in Los Angeles. The sure-why-not plot, modeled on the California water grab in “Chinatown,” is less interesting than the charismatic cast that rambles along with Pine on his excellent adventure.

Pine’s yarn was savaged when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, but the sour response is a bit like getting mad at a golden retriever for rolling around in the grass. A shaggy civic gadfly, Darren grandstands at City Council meetings and becomes so self-absorbed that he forgets what his girlfriend (Jennifer Jason Leigh) does for a living. His Jungian psychiatrist, Diane (Annette Bening), and her story-spouting filmmaker hubby, Jack (Danny DeVito), look after him like foster parents, while apparently overseeing some kind of movie about his life.

Darren is clued into the unnecessarily confusing water scheme by June (DeWanda Wise, glamorous and gorgeously costumed), who’s an assistant to his nemesis on the City Council (Stephen Tobolowsky). But the amateur sleuthing through Los Angeles landmarks — smartly shot on film by Matthew Jensen (“Wonder Woman”) — plays second fiddle to what’s really a collection of warm character sketches and mild eccentricities punctuated by meditative visions.

Pine wisely avoids winks to the audience. But he whiffs at making the mystery especially gripping, leaving one instead to savor the moments, like a note-perfect Bening calmly talking Pine’s befuddled pool man through his latest setback.

Poolman Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters.

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