Conversations about the Candyman franchise will undoubtedly be ongoing as we await Nia DaCosta and Jordan Peele’s “spiritual sequel.” To that end, we’ll be collecting essential reading here – so send us any further suggestions.
After the success of 1992’s Candyman (directed by Bernard Rose), a sequel was inevitable. The 1995 Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh was directed by Bill Condon, who would go on to write and direct the acclaimed 1998 film, Gods and Monsters. Despite Condon’s later success, Farewell to the Flesh only makes it strikingly clear how badly we need the upcoming “spiritual sequel” to Candyman written by Jordan Peele and directed by Nia DaCosta. DaCosta’s Candyman will pick up from the 1992 original film, ignoring the sequels from 1995 and 1999—not a bad choice.
While the original Candyman has received—and deserves—much praise, it is not without its problems. In Horror Noire (2011), Robin Means Coleman has pointed out that Rose’s Candyman gives the white protagonist Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) and, indeed, all whites a pass: “Rather, he punishes Blacks” (189). And, in the end, Helen Lyle proves herself the hero of her own story and destroys Candyman (Tony Todd), emerging herself as the powerful monster poised to move the narrative forward. Again, as Means Coleman has pointed out, “this is a movie about celebrating White womanhood.” Candyman himself, she continues, “disappears along with the history of racism he brings. It is all about Helen as she becomes monstrous” (190).
When people talk about the golden age of horror, the 1990s are hardly ever mentioned. Still, it is worth mentioning that this was the decade that began with a horror film winning the “Big Five” Academy Awards: Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs (1991). The “realistic” horror of the ’90s featured protagonists facing crazed serial killers in films such as Silence and David Fincher’s Se7en (1995). Horror noir was in, but there’s one film that gets overlooked that could also fall into this category: Bernard Rose’s Candyman (1992).
Where there is isolation, horror tends to follow, which is why it makes sense that urban horror is relatively uncommon. What genres such as film noir and neo-noir have noticed and frequently reflected on is that even a densely populated city can still be a place of isolation and alienation. This is something that horror does not usually focus on, but in Candyman, the Chicago setting is vital to understanding the themes Rose develops. Candyman is mostly set in the now-demolished Cabrini-Green housing project. Called Little Hell in the nineteenth century, the area where Cabrini-Green was built had been largely populated by white immigrants before becoming 90% black by the 1990s. Given Cabrini-Green’s infamous reputation for crime and violence, Rose’s use of it as the setting for Candyman brings an element of real fear into the film. The true horror of Candyman is a dangerous combination of poverty, classism, and racism. Through this combination, Cabrini-Green becomes an area that is both alienated by white society and alienating to protagonist Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen), who investigates the area as part of her graduate thesis on urban legends. Read more
The question as to whether an examination of societal inequality can exist in the space between documented historical atrocities and traditional horror filmmaking is answered, although only in part, by Bernard Rose’s Candyman (1992). Heavy on the visceral thrills we expect from the genre, the film succeeds in asking some very pointed questions about race and class, even if the answers are deeply problematic. Certainly, Candyman’s titular villain is a unique manifestation of the intersection between race and historical memory in popular culture and so I am interested in taking a closer look at the film’s underlying social narrative.
