Review of Candyman (2021) by Jgdearing — 19 Sep 2021

Nia DaCosta's Candyman continues the exploration of racism through its iconic gory exploits continuing straight from the original in a similar fashion to the 2018 'Halloween'. To put it as forward as possible, this movie is all over the place. From its CGI to its themes to its pacing it seems to switch up with the movies it wants to be.

Let's start with the good: DaCosta's direction with visuals and style excel, creating an environment that truly is haunting with a remastered Candyman score to its cinematography that flows from one shot to another with excellent misé en scene-- particularly with the first murders with the Art Curator and his intern. The acting was superb with a standout performance from Teyonah Parris and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II that clearly had fun with their roles and brought an excellent sense of nuance and sense of relationship with what they had.

Now the bad-- The pacing is all over the place. What started as a potential mystery horror where the audience finds out with the main character Anthony that the Candyman is actually an anthology series instead of a one-act show turns into a jumbled mess as DaCosta fails at balancing the horror with the plot. With the run time being 91 minutes, there is a marathon sprint from the second act to the third hard enough to give the audience whiplash. We find out that old man William Burke, who witnessed the latest Candyman after local personality Sherman Fields was brutally murdered by police, was grooming Anthony into his role as the next Candyman. I won't say there wasn't a setup for this twist, but there wasn't enough room to let the audience breathe and be able to accept the ending we had. Lastly, let's talk about the gentrification segment. A massive theme of Candyman is the gentrification many ghettos have gone through in order to turn a profit that left many Black residents on the streets with nowhere to go. DaCosta shoves this theme as far down our throats as possible making sure the audience has a PHD on her personal definition of the term. Though, how she approaches these social themes is what is giving her film the division it has. It's clear DaCosta wants to direct her social themes towards white people who are unknowing or ignorant of the situation in hopes of bringing light on the subject. While clearly, it is not her only target by any means, with how she has presented these social subjects that feel like definite lectures at times, it can be safe to say that this is so. What makes this choice odd is how she portrays white people in the film. White people are brutalized on epic horror standards along with being portrayed as oafs, **** or both-- most of the time the latter. Other than a flashback out of the 8 people killed (not including the plethora of all white cops at the end), 7 were white. From racist art curators to **** white bullies to the scene where the only person-of-color was smart enough to leave, its safe to assume DaCosta wanted to make a statement with white people. To put that together with a thematic choice to appeal to white people's ignorance on a hefty subject is... odd to say the least.

This film is getting much better critic reviews than expected. Though an enjoyable film with the first two acts and everything it had going for it, the negatives clearly outweigh the positives, and the film is worse for it.