The Mosley Review: Candyman (2021)
When I write my reviews I pride myself on always giving my honest and true thoughts on the film I see. In February 2020, I saw a well paced, eerie and brutal film that was true to its namesake. It had almost all the elements to be a worthy requel to a horror classic. It built upon and established a new lore for the franchise while still maintaining its own style and message. Like the audience in attendance, I had some constructive suggestions and criticism and it was great to see those notes taken into consideration. I was one of the lucky few to see Candyman months in advance. Like I said it wasn't perfect, but it was truly a love letter to the original film. Now more than a year has passed and the finished version of the film is here. I will NOT continue in this review to point out what was put in or taken out, but I will give my honest review of what I thought of the final film. That being said, this was a prime example of what happens when you have something special that gets ruined by over editing and straying away from made it so unique.
This franchise has haunted the nightmares of a certain generation and made mirrors creepy to look at. Candyman was an entity that scared me more than the Bloody Mary folktale and I never dared to utter his name in fear of a gruesome death. Now it has gotten the sequel/mid franchise reboot treatment and for the most part it was alright. It picks up more than a decade from the original film and I liked how connected it was. There were some beautifully gruesome moments and I liked that the themes of racial injustice, violence and societal stereotypes stayed true to the basis of the franchise. Where I felt the film excelled in themes, it lacked subtlety in the building of the eerie atmosphere. It felt like I was being shown a lot of images, then some violence, then a subplot that doesn't get a fair payoff and then I was rushed out the door. The film really had so many inconsistencies in tone, visuals and just the overall arc. I wanted to feel the world collapsing around the lead characters and not have it dropped in my lap with choppy editing. Luckily, the characters in the film keep you invested enough to see this new tale to the end.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was great and charismatic as Anthony McCoy. I liked seeing his pride and curiosity lead him down a path into madness. I did like how his art began to portray what is happening to him psychologically. Teyonah Parris as his girlfriend Brianna Cartwright, was great and I loved her chemistry with Anthony. Her story was interesting because of her traumatic life event, but it tragically was cut short and under developed. Nathan Stewart-Jarrett was the perfect as her brother Troy. He was the fun comic relief and voice of reason needed for a tonal reprieve. Rebecca Spence was perfectly stuck up and crass as the art critic Finley Stephens. Her conversations with Anthony pushes the constant message of gentrification and racial insensitivities into the forefront. Colman Domingo is one an actor that can deliver any dialogue and make it sound wise and seductive. As the laundromat owner, William Burke, he delivers a fantastic performance. He clearly was the historian of the Candyman lore and I felt the pain of the past victims in his delivery and voice. Vanessa Williams returns as Anne-Marie McCoy and she was outstanding as Anthony’s estranged mother.
The score by Robert A. A. Lowe was fantastically eerie, haunting and sometimes quite unsettling. I loved that the original theme returned and it set the tone perfectly. I just wish more scenes had time to breath without his score and THEN it would creep in. Some horror films suffer from too much music and not enough ambient noise. The fact that you can hear every bit sound makes you focus more and the sound design was great when the score wasn't present. I loved the storytelling of the past Candymen in the puppet sequences. It was heartbreaking, creative, graphic and beautiful. What I truly didn't like about this film is that it tried so hard to tie into the original film and didn't try to stand on its own. The editing in the film was off in a number of scenes as it creates a great deal of continuity errors in tone. A perfect example is when Anthony's skin is starting to decay, its rapid approaching the final stage of decomposition and then in the next shot its back to stage 2. As a whole, this was a decent horror thriller that became too indulgent on the creep factor and just about missed everything about what made the original so special. Like I said before, I saw a excellent follow up to the original 1992 classic but sadly, that was over a year ago. Let me know what you thought of the film or my review in the comments below. Thanks for reading!
