Director/co-writer Nia DaCosta has lots of ideas and she seems determined to cram every single one of them into "Candyman."
Producer/co-writer Jordan Peele's name is featured prominently in ads for the reimagining of the "Candyman" legend, which includes a shout-out to the originals that starred Tony Todd as a tormented killer. But "Candyman" lacks the elegance of Peele's "Get Out" and "Us." Instead of beginning with an urgent social justice issue and finding a horror-movie metaphor to illustrate what's shocking and unfair about it, as the Peele films do, "Candyman" starts with a horror-movie premise and ladles a whole lot of stuff over it, in the hope that something will stick.
It begins well enough. Early scenes show the happy domestic life of gallerist Brianna (Teyonah Parris) and artist Tony (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who was so outstanding as Bobby Seale in "The Trial of the Chicago 7" last year). Intriguingly, the couple have been both limited by and benefited from gentrification, since their swank condo sits on land once occupied by Chicago's notorious Cabrini-Green housing project.
Why Cabrini-Green was so violent and dangerous is a compelling question, since it's easy to blame residents without questioning why they were cooped up there in the first place, but "Candyman" keeps shifting the ideas it wants to explore. An acquaintance tells Tony about the rich history of Black artistry, for instance, warning, "They love what we make, but not us."
There's also police brutality. And white people falsely reporting Black "crimes." And cultural appropriation. And the use of Black trauma to entertain audiences who don't care about the toll that takes. DaCosta even tosses in some David Cronenberg-style body horror, as a bee sting on Tony's hand turns nasty and then revolting.
It would be worthwhile to make a movie that focused on any of those things but lumping them together diminishes their impact. It also makes it hard to track the movie, as new characters keep distracting us from Brianna and Tony. (I'm all for mean girls getting their comeuppance, but I don't know what they're doing in this movie. And while I'm at it, costume designer Lizzie Cook's enthusiasm for experimental pants' lengths is extremely distracting.)
DaCosta also has lots of visual ideas. A scene of carnage, cleverly captured in the reflection of a woman's compact mirror, shows that DaCosta has done her thriller homework. The handsome, stately compositions provide a stylish contrast to the chaos that occurs within them, even if you may wonder how characters employed in the arts and journalism pay for their architecturally significant homes.
The best decision in "Candyman" — which, in case you're wondering, is never scary — was to hire the Manual Cinema collective to create what would have been simple flashbacks in a more conventional movie. As various characters reveal the historical trauma Brianna and Tony are up against, those stories of race-based cruelty are illustrated with shadow puppets. The sequences feel like a nod to the silhouette work of Kara Walker, where the horrors of the narrative feel even more horrible because of the gentility of the technique.
