The much-awaited new Jordan Peele produced horror movie, Candyman, was released this weekend. I decided to do a homemade double feature with it. The Empty Man, which a horror film released onto VOD earlier in the year has now been placed on HBO Max for free streaming. So after my run on Friday morning, I watched The Empty Man, then a few hours later, I went to the theaters and watched Candyman. Now neither of these movies really had much in common other than that both deities were summoned using their name, and that at one point in both movies, the deities came for some high schoolers. I was not overly impressed by either film, but at least Candyman had a ton to say.
Candyman starts with Billy doing his laundry when he finds a wanted man hiding in the wall that offers him candy, after he screams, the police rush in and brutally beat the man to death. Later we get the back story that this man was harmless, and that the real person behind putting the razors in candy was someone else, but that is basically all in the trailer. Fast froward to present day. Anthony is an artist living in Chicago with his girlfriend, an art curator of sorts. Anthony is coming off a popular first act in his career, but he is struggling to find inspiration for a second act of his career. Until he ventures into the condemned projects and meets William. William tells him the story of the Candyman and how to conjure him. While in the projects, Anthony gets stung by a bee, and the bite starts to spread through him, it is symbolic of his obsession with the Candyman. As the bite gets worse, so does his mental state and his obsession. The Candyman slowly claims more lives as people repeat his curse. In the end, Anthony ends up turning into the Candyman, or more accurately becomes part of the collective of people killed unjustly.
There are two main themes here, one is the injustice that black and brown people face from the police, and the second comes from gentrification. The initial legend of the Candyman, and the personification of this person, comes from Daniel, the man with the hook for the hand, but he represents much more than just Daniel. As William puts it, Candyman is a collective. Candyman is every person who has been wrongly pursued and unjustly murdered by the police and forgotten. Thus, the body of Anthony eventually turning into a hive like creation where bees are buzzing around. Where his body is housing all the bees, who are symbolizing the wrongly killed. They also mention Helen Lyle who went mad and ended up burning in a fire, Helen was white, and her legend and name lived on, whereas the name of the collective that make up the Candyman have been forgotten because they were more “disposable” because they were black as the movie implies.
There was a ton of gross body horror in this film, it was not for the faint of heart. There was the initial bee sting that slowly festers into something that climbs up Anthony’s arm and up to his face, and when he is finally seen, the degradation has reached up to his face disgustingly so. Not only does this bite look gross, but there are also close ups of Anthony peeling and picking at the scab. Then when the Candyman kills someone, it is typically done with his hook, and ends up in a slashed up gory mess with throats slit and achilles tendons hooked. This is all further perpetuated, when the final transformation is taking place and William saws off Anthony’s arm and shoves a hook into the now stump. This all made me think of something that I had heard Bomani Jones say on his podcast last summer at the height of Black Lives Matter. He said that he could not watch the George Floyd video, and that he no longer watched any of the police brutality videos. Those videos are clearly hard to watch and disturbing. So the gross physical manifestation and hard to watch scenes of the film allude to the hard to watch videos of real life police brutality.
The other highly emphasized point in the film was gentrification. As they say in the film, the white people created the ghetto, and then they realized they made the ghetto, so they got rid of it. So, the luxury apartment Anthony was now living in had been in the place where the ghettos had previously been, and the only remnants of the ghettos close by were the small apartments that had been condemned. Having Chicago as the backdrop for this story was perfect, because when it comes to gentrification there are two main cities that are continually brought up: New York and Chicago. As they discuss in the film, the prices in these areas drop and the city panics and offers them as cheap alternatives for white people to move into and build up. So then the white people move in, and then the black people and other minorities are slowly priced out. Before they know it, what had once been their community has now been taken over by a white community. Chicago is infamous for its redlining, which is basically where minority groups are sectioned together by their housing districts and receive less funds and services, and the communities that they are separated from receive more of the money and better services. So instead of helping the people in need, those in the better situations get to continually increase their comfortable lifestyle.
To make a slight comparison of this film to The Empty Man, which I thought would have had more in common, they but did not, both films have a summoning element to them. One you blow in a bottle and think about the Empty Man, and he gives you three days. This is like The Ring where if you watch the video, then you have seven days to live. In Candyman, after you say the name five times looking into a mirror, you have minutes left to live, but he can only be viewed threw a mirror. All these have an urban legend vibe, very similar to the Bloody Mary legend, where if you look into the mirror at midnight and say Bloody Mary five times then she will appear, something that terrified me when I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night as a kid. The difference is that to understand the ending of The Empty Man, you need a degree in philosophy, but to understand the point of Candyman, you just need to watch the news any day of the week and see the injustices they are discussing.
This was Jordan Peele’s third film, Get Out, Us, and now Candyman, and this was his worst. That is not to say that it is bad. The other two were great, and Get Out was nominated for a best picture Oscar. Clearly, he has had a high standard to hold up to since his first feature release, so no one can blame him for his subsequent films being lesser. The plot did not entertain as much as the first two, and overall, it was not too scary. It was just gross at times. The suspense did not seem to build, and the twists were largely predictable. The material was very heavy in nature, which is fine, and the point was made, but he was able to make a similar point in his first two films, and they were more enjoyable. It is possible that Peele saw the continual abuse being done by the police, so he could have felt like he needed to make his point much blunter and hard hitting, so if that was his intention, he was spot on in doing it.
I had high hopes for this movie, as I do with any commercialized horror blockbuster film, but if I had to choose between seeing this one and The Night House, I would recommend The Night House instead, but it is more of a matter of preference and what you want to get out of a film. Candyman is an urban legend that focuses on brutality, injustice, and gentrification, whereas The Night House focuses on grief and dealing with loss. It is also creepier and unsettling compared to body horror. I give Candyman 2.5 stars. It had high potential, but it failed to reach those heights and the heights of Peele’s previous films.
Other Films This Week:
The Empty Man starts out with a hiking trip gone wrong, where one of the members falls prey to a deity that has a three-day plan to kill. Then the film goes to the modern day where an ex-cop searches for a missing girl. Finally, it gets more complex and philosophical in a weird final act where the ex-cop comes to a very odd realization. It was a long movie that was slightly entertaining, but it would have been better off sticking to the mountains and dragging that story out on its own. Instead, it tries to cram a ton of complex ideas into 2 hours and fails to do so in a compelling manner.
Batman: Under the Red Hood was an animated Batman movie about a new villain that arises in Gotham after the Jason version of Robin is murdered by the Joker. Red Hood has a very messed up view of justice, but he thinks that he is making things better. Batman and Nightwing team up to take down this new adversary. It is a similar plot to season three of the show Titans on HBO Max.
The Death of Superman was a story about sacrifice. When a doomsday arrives and starts to destroy the city, the Justice League, minus Superman, team up to try and take down the beast, so Superman can go on a date with Lois Lane. The crew is incredibly unsuccessful, and a few of them almost die, then Superman shows up. An epic one on one battle ensues, and ultimately superman is forced to sacrifice himself to save Lois and the rest of the city.
New Rankings:
Candyman: 2.5 Stars
The Empty Man: 2.5 Stars
Batman: Under the Red Hood: 3 Stars
The Death of Superman: 3 Stars
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