29 years after Clive Barker’s hook-handed urban legend first leapt onto the big screen and into audiences’ nightmares, 21st-century horror auteur, Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us) and director Nia Dacosta (Crossing the Line and the upcoming The Marvels) have crafted a truly frightening new Candyman sequel that aims to give a whole new generation an irrational fear of bathroom mirrors. Candyman 2021 is almost upon us. Dare you say his name?
Candyman 2021 origins. What is Candyman?
The #Candyman legend has such an undeniable grip on the imagination that it’s hard to believe it’s not based on some horrific historical event that’s been amplified and distorted over countless generations. And yet, the truth is that the big-screen horror icon actually sprang from a 1985 Clive Barker short story, The Forbidden.
In an inspired move, 1992’s film version of Candyman transplanted Barker’s tale of an urban legend claiming the life of a woman researching it from Liverpool to Chicago’s Cabrini Green housing project, swapping the inequities of the British class system for racial inequalities
The original film centred on Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen), a graduate student who, while studying urban legends, hears about Candyman, a hook-handed bogeyman whose vengeful spirit haunts the residents of Chicago’s deprived Cabrini Green neighbourhood. Legend has it that Candyman will appear and gut anyone who looks into a mirror and repeats his name five times. Something, as the legend goes, that he has done 25 times so far.
Travelling to Cabrini Green, Helen learns that Candyman was a young African-American artist called Daniel Robitaille who, after the American Civil War in the 1860s, was accepted into white society, taking commissions to paint portraits for wealthy families. Such acceptance, however, was conditional and when Robitaille fell in love and had a child with a white woman, her father led a mob to cut his hand off, cover him with honey and set a swarm of bees on him until he succumbed to the stings.
Helen concludes that Candyman is really just a myth created to help explain the hardships of living in Cabrini Green. However, the urban legend will not be denied, and Candyman manifests, beginning a campaign of slaughter designed to restore the power of his legend while simultaneously destroying Helen’s reputation and sanity.
Eventually, while rescuing the infant son of a Cabrini Green resident, Anne-Marie McCoy, from Candyman, Helen sacrifices her own life. And, in doing so, her own fate becomes intertwined with Candyman’s – a gruesome new chapter in the urban legend she foolishly sought to explain away and rob of its power. https://www.youtube.com/embed/TPBH3XO8YEU?rel=0&controls=0&showinfo=0
Candyman trailer and plot : What’s Candyman 4 about?
Part series reset and part unholy resurrection, the new Candyman movie ignores the horrifically so-so sequels – the New Orleans-set Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh, and the LA-based Candyman 3: Day of the Dead – choosing, instead, to return to the original classic’s stomping ground of Cabrini Green in Chicago – but while it exists on the same timeline, the neighbourhood is almost unrecognisable.
The thing is, almost 30 years after the events of the original Candyman, gentrification has transformed the former housing project. And it’s into this newly aspirational Calibri Green that Anthony McCoy, Anne-Marie’s now-adult son, returns with his gallery-owner girlfriend to live and work.
With his own art career faltering, Anthony seizes on an old-timer’s telling of the Candyman legend and uses it to fuel an increasingly harrowing series of artworks that feed on his sanity while unwittingly unleashing the fury of a resurgent Candyman on the neighbourhood’s blasé millennial influx. As Anthony unravels and Candyman’s body count begins to rise again, the real question is this: in the age of social media can Candyman’s bloody legend be contained at all or will it spread unchecked?
Candyman cast and characters. Who’s in Candyman 2021?
We love that the new Candyman movie acknowledges the passing of time while anchoring its events in the original film’s world. This is reflected in Candyman 2021’s cast, too, which includes familiar faces as well as some of the brightest new acting talents.
- Tony Todd (The Rock, Final Destination) is Daniel Robitaille/Candyman.
Boris Karloff, Anthony Hopkins, Robert Englund – only a hallowed few actors define movie monsters so vividly that the mere mention of their name is enough to give you chills. So it is with Tony Todd, who returns to play Candyman for the fourth time.
- Vanessa Williams (New Jack City, TV’s Soul Food) is Anne-Marie McCoy. Her infant son, Anthony, may have been too young to remember his brush with Candyman in 1992, but Anne-MarieMcCoy – played again by Vanessa Williams – certainly does and, 29 years on, she’s not at all pleased that her son has started creating artworks inspired by the hook-handed bogeyman.
- Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Us, Aquaman) is Anthony McCoy. As an infant, Anthony was kidnapped by Candyman. Saved by Helen Lyle, he and his mum left Cabrini Green. Now an artist, adult Anthony has returned to live and work in the neighbourhood, but while he has no conscious memory of Candyman, the vengeful spirit isn’t done with him yet.
- Teyonah Parris (If Beale Street Could Talk, Dear White People) is Brianna Cartwright.
Brianna is an art gallery director and Anthony’s girlfriend. When Anthony becomes obsessed with the Candyman urban legend, his artwork takes an exhilarating but increasingly tortured turn. But Cabrini Green’s millennial art lovers think his dark new direction slays. If only they knew that wasn’t just a figure of speech…
- Colman Domingo (Selma, If Beale Street Could Talk) is William Burke
We can understand why Anthony’s mum decided not to repeat the urban legend of Candyman to her son, but nobody told long-time Cabrini Green resident, William Burke not to. It’s Burke who sparks Anthony’s interest in Candyman, setting him on a path of twisted obsession.
- Cassie Kramer (Chicago Fire, Bimbo) is Caroline Sullivan/Helen Lyle.
Played by Virginia Madsen in the first Candyman, Helen Lyle died and returned as a vengeful spirit herself at the end of the movie. Curiously she’s returning in Candyman 2021, played by Cassie Kramer. Since it was heavily suggested in the original movie that Helen was the reincarnation of Daniel Robitaille’s true love, could the cursed couple be playing tag team this time around?
5 reasons why you need to see Candyman (2021) on the big screen.
Whether you’re ready or not, #Candyman is returning to haunt the big screen from 27 August 2021. Here’s why you won’t want to miss getting scared silly at ODEON when he does.
- Candyman (2021) is genuinely frightening
We love scary movies of all kinds but with Nia DaCosta’s Candyman we’re relishing the return of a true icon of horror cinema. This is classic watching-from-between-your-fingers, sleep-with-the-lights-on stuff.
- Candyman is as smart as it scary
Candyman isn’t just a wonderfully scary film, it’s a story about the evolving African American experience; of who gets to write history and the consequences of injustice. It also examines the way powerful stories can spread in the smartphone age. Link needs embedding:
- Candyman (2021) is the work of major creative talents
Both Jordan ‘Get Out’ Peele, and Candyman’s co-writer and director, Nia DaCosta (Crossing the Line AKA Little Woods) are filmmaking virtuosi. To put it another way, Candyman is visually inventive and surprising. What do we mean? Well, check out DaCosta’s extraordinary and imaginative shadow puppet trailer.Link needs embedding:
- Candyman (2021) is a worthy successor to the classic 1992 original
A lot of resurrected film franchises struggle to justify the long period between sequels, but Candyman leans into it brilliantly. 29 years have passed in Cabrini Green and the gentrification that’s occurred in that time has diluted the power of the Candyman legend. But, as the neighbourhood’s new residents are about to find out, not believing in the bogeyman is no defence if he’s real…
- Horror is better shared
Watching any film in the cinema amplifies everyone’s feels and what’s true of romcoms is doubly so when it comes to horror films’ jump scares and hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck moments of dread.
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