‘Candyman’ review summary: mixed reviews on Nia DaCosta’s horror pic

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Almost 30 years after the Vengeful Spirit first haunted the big screen in 1992, the Candyman is back.

Serving as a “spiritual sequel” to the original supernatural slasher of the same name, Nia DaCosta’s “Candyman” – written by recent horror darling Jordan Peele – has received mostly positive reviews.

Read some highlights of what the critics are saying below:

Variety’s Owen Gleiberman:

But now “Candyman” has been remade, by director Nia DaCosta (I’m happy to report Tony Todd is back – he looks a little older, and a lot more venerable in his smile of unspeakable pain) , and what she’s done is make a horror film that has its share of thrilling shocks, but is rooted in a richer meditation on social terror from the Candyman fable. The new “Candyman” refers to the original’s plot as a sinister shadow puppet fanfare, as if to say, “It was mythology. This is reality.” It’s less of a “slasher movie” than a drama with a slasher in the middle.

Michael O’Sullivan of the Washington Post:

As with Peele’s directorial efforts, there are a lot of intriguing notions played out in this film: ideas about gentrification, systemic racism, figurative ghosts from White America’s haunted past – with a few literal ghosts – and l ‘mirror idea, which is threaded throughout the opening credits’ “Candyman” intentionally back to the very end. You could call it all the chewy nougat center of this movie, which in many other ways obeys some of the less interesting conventions of the slasher genre. As an example of a scary story / social critic, it’s a cut above Peele’s “Us”, but far less edgy than her Oscar-winning debut album, “Get Out”.

Angelica Jade Bastién of the vulture:

“Candyman” lacks energy and inventiveness. Its script is remarkably didactic, showing that it was neither intended for an audience of die-hard horror fans nor black people. Every point of the intriguing plot – the Candymen, the ethics of the “invisible man” – is wasted by pedestrian direction, easy thinking, and a loose commodification of darkness. Trying to accommodate the contradictions of the 1992 film, as well as carving out their own work, DaCosta and his collaborators have created a dud that cannot make its policy entanglement – on gentrification, the black body (the horror ), racism, white desire – to feel relevant or provocative. When the darkness is reduced, this is the kind of poor cultural product that is sold to us.

Robert Daniels from Polygon:

Several series of Black Lives Matter protests and the proliferation of videos capturing the Black Death at the hands of the police crystallized Rose’s film as a fantasy folk horror, a palpable parable of dark reality, set in an abandoned side of the city. city. DaCosta is the recipient of these themes, tasked with translating them into a story that matches the current racial environment. But his Candyman is a confused and overloaded network of superficially presented ideas, including critiques of gentrification and the critical white goal, and a demand for black release.

Richard Lawson from Vanity Fair:

The film prefers to narrate rather than show, creating an incomplete fusion of social commentary and gothic fears. The decision to make it all clear is understandable: especially after “Get Out,” there was an appetite for genre films, especially horror, that say something about society. And the topics covered in “Candyman” are as urgent as they come. What is lacking in DaCosta’s film, however, is a more thoughtful synthesis of message and medium.

Mark Kennedy of Associated Press:

The filmmakers use fabulous paper puppets to tell about aspects of the past and have a recurring pattern of bees and mirrors. “Candyman” gets dirtier and dirtier as it unfolds, moving from glistening granite countertops in elegantly lighted and airy kitchens to grimy, muddy, abandoned and graffiti-scarred projects. There are more than a few mind-blowing scenes, including the camera steadily wandering away from a well-appointed apartment at night as the woman there wrestles with the Candyman, and one in a girls bathroom. which is terrifying for the fragments it does not contain. t show.

Anya Stanley from AV Club:

The storyline is rich in social and cultural incentives, sometimes crammed into the narrative, such as when Anthony takes out a drunken art dealer as a sexual predator. (The subject is no longer discussed). The main one, concerning the stain of racial torment marking generations of black citizens, is sufficiently complex to initiate the intended conversations and to give “Candyman” strong replay value. Indeed, the film’s website offers tandem educational resources for educators. This story is more about asking questions than providing clear answers. […] Where Bernard Rose spoke about white anxieties and the creepy black man image in 1992, DaCosta widens the conversation, shifting the horror from a man to the many structures that foment brutality on the black population.

Amon Warmann from Time Out:

It helps that Candyman is deliciously downcast. From the first image, DaCosta is always doing something interesting with the camera. There is clever visual storytelling almost everywhere you look, from the clever use of mirrors, to daring scene transitions, to set design that begins to reflect Candyman’s look in interesting ways. Jump scares are rare but hardly necessary: ​​it all contributes to a growing sense of dread as the film moves towards its daring conclusion.

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