Family Business

I love Candyman. It’s one of my go to horror films. It’s moody, it’s gory, and it has great performances, especially from all time horror legend Tony Todd. It dresses itself up like a slasher flick but then acts more like a haunting possession story, in large part because it’s based on a story by Clive Barker, one of the acknowledged masters of horror. It’s the kind of creepy fright fest that you can watch over and over again, especially on a dark night when the wind is up and everything feels extra spooky.

My love for the film doesn’t extend to its two direct sequels, though, because those films fail to understand what worked so well about the original film. Where the original Candyman was dark and evocative, the sequels are bland and tedious and barely rise to the occasion. The best thing that can be said about either of the two direct sequels is that they kept Tony Todd employed, and that was never a bad thing. He was a fantastic actor, and horror great, and he deserved to be in everything. But the rest of the films… yeah, take it or leave it.

Phillip Purcell (Michael Culkin) is a professor who wrote a book on the Candyman legend. Taking the book on tour, his stop in New Orleans doesn’t go exactly as planned. For starters, on a dare from an audience member during a book tour, Purcell says “Candyman” five times to his reflection. He’s then challenged by Ethan Tarrant (William O'Leary), the son of a man who was obsessed with the Candyman. Purcell wasn’t able to help the man, and Ethan blames Purcell for his fathers eventual death. Ethan threatens Purcell in front of witnesses, and when the professor later winds up dead, thanks to the Candyman (Tony Todd), Ethan is then blamed for it.

Ethan’s sister, Annie (Kelly Rowan), gets that call that her brother was arrested while she’s teaching art. She rushes off to learn about what Ethan did (and didn’t do), and then when she gets back to her classroom the kids are all abuzz about the Candyman. To prove to them the mythical figure isn’t real she then says his name five times to her reflection. This, of course, summons the Candyman and he begins stalking her, killing all the people in her life. But he’s not just there to torture her; he has a connection to her, and the whole Tarrant family, and to save her own life Annie is going to have to figure out what it is and use that as a means to stop the Candyman once and for all.

While the first film has some mythologizing about who the Candyman was and why he haunted people, it was the right amount of backstory to get you invested. The first film was far more concerned with its heroine, Helen Lyle, than in going deep on his character and trying to get into the guts of what made him a person and a monster. It’s like Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh didn’t learn that lesson, though, as it makes the cardinal mistake of horror films: it over-explains its monster to the point where you no longer give a crap about him.

Horror is a balancing act. You want a monster you can understand, one that has defined rules and specific powers, but you don’t need to learn too much about him. A good monster has backstory and motivation you can explain in a single sentence. Freddy, a child molestor, was killed by the parents of the kids, and now he haunts and kills those kids in their dreams. Jason was a kid killed at camp and he comes back to kill campers. Chucky is a voodoo-animated doll with the soul of a serial killer inside. The more you explain, the further you get away from that, and that leads to more exposition, more talking, more explaining, and a lot less horror.

The problem with Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh is that it has to explain so much to get the story moving. You can’t just have someone be dumb and say “Candyman” five time into a mirror, although that does happen enough in this film to make you question the intelligence of everyone on screen, but now we have to explain why the Candyman is stalking Annie, and why he wants revenge, and what it all means. By the end of it, barely anyone has died, I’ve had the plot explained to me three times over, and I just don’t care.

When the film gets out of its own way and lets the monster be a monster, it’s actually pretty good. There are some moody and interesting moments, times where the Candyman comes out of nowhere, slices someone up, and acts really haunting. Part of that is because Tony Todd was a legend and he’s great on screen (even if this film doesn’t use him enough). Partly it’s because these are the moments where the camera and lighting and set design all come together to create real ambiance and mood. The scares in the film are great, there just aren’t enough of them.

Watching this film after watching the first, you realize what’s really missing is tension. The first film was able to build creeping dread and horror even when the monster wasn’t on screen. Helen would go to the projects, explore around, and see ghastly things that made her stomach (and our stomachs) turn. That built enough tension such that when the Candyman appeared, we were ready to be scared. But that never happens here. The film doesn’t know how to build tension, it just meanders through the story until it can spike a moment with the monster. That’s not how to build to a good kill, and it rarely feels scary at all.

I think the production team really wanted you to invest in the story of the Candyman, but to do so they decided to tell his story through the lens of a rich white girl and her family. Helen was a rich white girl, in fairness, but she got punished for her hubris. Annie doesn’t get punished like that. In fact, arguably, the Candyman barely punishes her at all. She never possessed or controlled, she’s never made to question her sanity. He arrives, kills someone, and then leaves her alone for a bit for… reasons. It doesn’t suit him or the story, and it leaves us following around a boring white girl simply because.

Look, I could go on and on, but the simple fact is that Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh is a boring, tedious, waste of a film. It squanders its great horror monster of a story that doesn’t suit him, and it barely has the ability to find any scares at all. It’s a weak, watered down horror movie that was only made to capitalize on the success of the first film. It would have been better to leave well enough alone.