Prestige Disease

this one's definitely a ramble

I’m a big fan of the original 1992 film Candyman, as well as a defender of its sequel, Farewell to the Flesh, as an at-least interesting if rocky attempt. (We do not speak of Day of the Dead.) So it’s with considerable disappointment that I say that the 2021 reboot, produced by Jordan Peele, is just not very good. It’s a confused mishmash in terms of both plot and themes. [spoilers follow]

Like a lot of bad horror movies, the film uses the abstraction inherent to the fantastical to evade the need for plot coherence. The film introduces the concept of multiple Candymen, which is fine, but doesn’t really do anything with it. The reveal at the end that a wise character who teaches the lead about Candyman was somehow doing Candyman’s bidding or otherwise preparing the way for Candyman neither makes much sense to me nor adds anything to the story. The original Candyman is always political but never didactic, while the reboot insists on taking the implied politics of that first film and spelling them out for you in a way that feels stagey. There’s a short snippet of Philip Glass’s excellent score from the original, but otherwise the movie seems totally uninterested in using music as an artistic tool. By far the worst, though, is that the Candyman of this film is just not remotely as intimidating as in the first. He’s just not a scary villain, visually. They find an excuse to give Tony Todd a cameo, which is cool in and of itself, but it just reminds me of how much better that first film succeeded in the basic task here, which is to creep you out. And there’s not even really a brief nod to the first film’s broader interest in urban legends.

Also the movie makes the strange, strange choice of introducing actual candy as one of the magical accouterments of Candyman, in addition to bees, when the earlier films stuck to bees. (In fairness it’s never been entirely clear to me why he was called Candyman; I know that they poured honey on him when he was murdered, but how do you get to Candyman from there?)

Everything that the original did with ease and flair, the reboot attempts in a way that seems forced and labored. I do like both the male and female leads, there’s some good body horror, and there’s a really cool running device where bits of history are illustrated with this gorgeous diorama/shadow puppet technique. But as much as I liked it, with their self-conscious artistry those sections speak to the deeper problem afflicting 2021’s Candyman: prestige disease.