When it comes to this 2021 remake/sequel/reboot/whatever of Candyman I feel like there are two prevailing factors that most people will be able to agree on; 1 – the film looks stunning and Nia DaCosta is clearly a very promising director in the visual sense, and 2 – the film’s script is an absolute mess. Now the latter may be seen as a far more subjective factor in this conversation, however when it comes to underdeveloped arcs, a scattering of largely uninterrogated and barley glanced at themes, Candyman really does seem to fall victim to the three screenwriters it has credited. I don’t know the absolute ins and outs of how the ultimate script for this film came to be, however it very clearly feels like three different attempts to revitalise and modernise the Candyman mythos and the inherent social and racial themes it incorporates, however in so many ways this reboot/remake/sequel/whatever does fall prey to a mass of half-baked concepts and a serious thwarted potentional.
At the heart of Candyman is a distorted horror glance at the black experience, through multiple guises, including dissections of gentrification, the comodification of art created by black artists about (and not about) black pain, aswell as police brutality. For anybody who believes that this is some sort of woke reboot of a classic un-woke horror film, clearly hasn’t seen the original Candyman. The biggest difference here I would say is that the original chooses one factor of the black experience to discuss and dissect in the world of horror, rather than three huge topics in the space of 90 minutes. To put it frankly, DaCosta and the two other credited writers (Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld) have just bitten off more than can be chewed in such a running time. Also frequently the film makes the fatal choice to focus more so on conversations about these topics rather than actually having horror sequences. Putting labels on films can sometimes be a muted point, but one shouldn’t forget that this is a horror film, yet frequently Candyman seems to forget that itself. Multiple times inorganic conversations crop up where our characters just sit and discuss the themes of the film, in a painfully forced fashion, as if they were the podcast reviewing the film after the fact. Comparison can so often be a fruitless endeavour, but with Peele having a producer and writing credit, one can’t help but compare the focussed, deliberate and rather brilliant politics and horror of Get Out with the messiness of this film. This is however once more not to say that the film is without value, for I really cannot repeat to what extent DaCosta as a director, less so a writer, excites me greatly. Her use of filmic language in this film is so entirely thrilling that one cannot help but note the power of certain images. However they really are just marred by a shoddy script that come the films third act completely implodes and fails hard. I can certainly comment that without DaCosta’s direction, this film would certainly not be getting the 6/10 grade I am giving it.
In regards to performance the film features a stacked cast of new and emerging talent, who are all rather brilliant in their respective turns. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is our lead, paired with Teyonah Paris as his girlfriend. Both Mateen and Paris have stellar chemistry and charisma whenever they are together or apart, and their intrigue and horror at the plot that unveils itself is always believable and eerie. However both have moments as the film continues where credulity is seriously stretched, mainly when the possession elements and undercurrents of insanity start playing their parts. Colman Domingo, despite being thwarted by a truly terrible and painfully undeveloped turn of events for his character, does deliver an enjoyably dark storyteller performance, before segueing into a more manic turn as the film continues, both of which he does great work in. All in all Candyman really does suffer from putting too much onto its plate, when it’s successful, its successful, but these moments are unfortunately fleeting.
A deeply visually enthralling 6/10, whose multiple plots and several themes all come together in a rather muddy mess, albeit a very strikingly directed one. DaCosta’s film-making is frequently inspired but altogether jumbled by the end of the films run time. Themes and characters are introduced, painfully dissected with inorganic exposition, before being dismissed for another strand of political machinations told through a horror lens. When Candyman is scary, it’s not for long. When Candyman is politically intriguing, it’s a little too obvious. But when Candyman is intriguingly visual, it really is at its best.
P.S. And so we lose another clearly promising director to the Marvel machine. Come on guys. I mean, come on.
- - Thomas Carruthers
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