Candyman Review: Critics Are Impressed by Nia DaCosta, Jordan Peele’s Sequel, Call It a ‘Superb Confection of Satire and Scorn’
Director Nia DaCosta has returned with a sequel to the 1992 released film with the same name. The film promises to take you on a ride that's scary and creepy at the same time. The film is co-written by Jordan Peele, known for movies like Us and Get Out. Watchmen actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is in the lead role, playing the grown-up Anthony McCoy (the baby from the first movie). The horror premise takes place in the current time and what’s happened in the thirty years since the first movie.
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The film, just like the director promised, managed to creep everyone out and impress them at the same time. Critics are in love with the story and have only positive things to say. Candyman Trailer: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II Seeks the Terrifying Urban Legend Who Dares You To Say His Name Five Times! (Watch Video).
Check Out What The Critics Are Talking About:
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The Guardian: There are some startling and brilliant moments: Anthony is fatally egotistic and shallow, unable to suppress a grin of triumph at the grim TV news story about a Candyman-related horror at his gallery show, which mentioned him (“They said my name!”). And DaCosta contrives a tremendously bizarre death scene, a murder that we see at a distance, in longshot, as her camera pulls serenely away. This film is a very tasty confection of satire and scorn.
Vulture: 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.
Entertainment Weekly: “The Candyman-inspired work that an increasingly obsessive Anthony installs at Briana's latest opening provides the mirror and the means to resurrect him; several doomed meatbags almost immediately comply. There's some satisfying schadenfreude in watching gallery snobs and mean-girl high schoolers get disemboweled for being dumb enough to court death so breezily, but there's nothing new or shocking about their pulpy ends either. And as much care as Peele and Co. take to underscore the role of Blackness and justice and the basic struggle just be seen and acknowledged as a human being — Say His Name, pointedly, is the movie's tagline — those ideas are never fully explored or integrated into the standard slash-and-burn march of the plot.
Variety: "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. " From Candyman to Halloween Kills, 7 Horror Movies You Should Keep an Eye Out for in 2021.
The Wrap: “DaCosta’s attention to detail permeates virtually every aspect of the film: Anthony’s artwork, which reflects his shifting mental state, was created by Chicago artists Sherwin Ovid and Cameron Spratley. Production designer Cara Brower (“Our Friend”) ably transports us from the graffiti-covered Cabrini-Green of the 1970s to the pristine glass duplexes that replaced it."
Time Out: “It helps that Candyman is exquisitely shot. Right from the first frame, DaCosta is always doing something interesting with the camera. There is smart visual storytelling almost everywhere you look, from the clever use of mirrors, to edgy scene transitions, to set design that starts to mirror Candyman’s look in interesting ways. The jump scares are rare but hardly needed: all this contributes to a growing feeling of dread as the film speeds towards its bold conclusion."
Teyonah Parris (WandaVision), Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Utopia) and Colman Domingo (Euphoria) star in the supporting cast. Tony Todd who played Candyman in the original, reprises his role in the reboot. Candyman is releasing in USA on August 27.
