Nia DaCosta/Jordan Peele's "Candyman" sequel ("Candymen" might have been better title) breathes new life into the 30 year franchise by finding a new angle to the story. It keeps the same type of classy direction of Bernard Rose and Bill Condon of the first two films, while tackling themes of gentrification, police britality, and artists' mindless appropriation of violent tragedies. It links to the first film, while incorporating mythogy of the second film.
This movie is best appreciated at night with the lights off, and with headphones or a good sound system. John Guleserian's cinematography is great, the narrative shadow puppets were cool, and Lichens' score is consistently disturbing, while incorporating Glass' score of the original.
The screenplay however is uneven. The conversation of gentrification is intelligent amd balanced. So is the coverage of artists being insensitive and uncaring about the victims of the violence they depict, while focusing instead on their own fame. But the police brutality story is uneven, and some references to recent events ("Say his name") feel tacked on. The events depicted do match real life stories and can elicit empathy and rally against injustice. While Chicago police do disproportionately intervene African-Americans, and fheir is a history of brutality, an all-white modern day large Chicago police squad does not correspond with reality.
I dismiss others' complaints that 'all the victims are white'. No, not all are, and it is similar to the victim make-up of all the other "Candyman" movies: mostly white teen girls and white intellectual snobs, with the non-supernatural violence done by modern-day African-Americans against others, and in flashbacks, by racist whites. I will agree that the kill scenes themselves are inconsistently executed.
The bigger issue is that the story itself feels rewritten by people who did not agree on what was going on, and it falls apart in the last 20 minutes. The journey of Anthony's character makes no sense, nor does that of Billy, his guide into Candyman mythology. His girlfriend Brianna, the wealthy art exhibitor, has a distrubing backstory revelead halfway that is never developed. Mutliple variations of the Candyman are described, but only a couple are shown. If there was a succession and another variant took over 45 years ago, then why do we instead have the original in the previous films? Shouln't it had been the next one? At times they keep the original concept of Candyman as an urban legend of an atrocity that should not be mocked within ita community nor trivialized by outsiders, but then it is switched to a vigilante dishing out justice. The rules as to what happens when the name is called out are quite variable.
The acting is variable. The great Tony Todd is barely in the film. The child actors are good. Most of the snobby supporting cast overacts. Yaya Abdul Mateen II continues his streak of mixing in great acting with forced, overly conscious acting. Teyonah Parris does well with what they give her, and Colman Domingo is fine. Vanessa A. Williams steals the scene in which she is in.
