Candyman (1992)
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Candyman Movie Review
Candyman is a 1992 supernatural horror film directed by Bernard Rose and starring Virginia Madsen and Tony Todd. It’s a very interesting urban myth movie.
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“It was always you, Helen.
It was always you“
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It is about a student completing a thesis on urban legends and folklore, which leads her to the legend of the “Candyman”, the ghost of an artist and the son of a slave who was murdered in the late 19th century for his relationship with the daughter of a wealthy white man. Obviously, the film is not only your regular horror movie, but a sophisticated social commentary on race and class relations and its depiction of the horrendous Cabrini-Green housing unit was quite inspired and daring. Rare are US movies that are set in such an atrocious real world setting.
The movie also has a definite psychological thriller angle to it in the form of the protagonist being made to kill others by the titular figure, thus those scenes were pleasantly ambiguous and disturbing at first. But it’s above all else a very interesting urban myth horror flick that develops the origin story and the whole character superbly.
Tony Todd is fantastic as Candyman. His tall stature and calm voice made him instantly iconic and quite creepy along with the disturbing hook for a hand. All of his scenes had the effect of a nasty dream, which was very effective in conveying terror and confusion. I also really liked Virginia Madsen in the main role. She was confident and capable throughout.
All the black characters in the film make an impact and the movie is never racist, but genuinely modern in its depiction of black people in the early nineties. The ending was polarizing to me. I did like that they bravely killed off the main character, but it was unnecessary for her to kill her husband in the last scene, and the whole emphasis on gore was problematic as before that the movie was pleasantly mysterious and atmospheric instead of gory.
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Candyman is gorgeously filmed, very well edited and quite well directed. It is dense in plot and somewhat rushed, but the central mystery hooked me in and held my attention throughout while the strangeness of this story made for a fascinating watch. It’s a different horror movie, and thus it deserves its cult classic status.
