I rewatched “Candyman” (1992) to prepare for the direct sequel “Candyman” (2021). For those of you who are unfamiliar with the original, grad student Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) partners with Bernadette (Kasi Lemmons) to investigate urban legends, but her professor husband, Trevor (Xander Berkeley) poisons the pool of interviewees by giving a lecture about the same topic before she is finished. Helen initially confronts then retreats from her accusations that he professionally and intentionally undermined her work and is having an affair with a younger student. Instead she gets competitive and decides to focus on one specific urban legend about the titular character. She takes more risks against Bernadette’s advice venturing into a notorious housing project until she encounters quotidian dangers. When she approaches a tidy resolution to her search, she encounters a mysterious figure, Daniel Robitaille (Tony Todd), repeatedly discovers herself in the wrong place at the wrong time and becomes the chief suspect in a series of murders and a kidnapping. Will she be able to stop the real culprit?
The original and sequel share an important theme: a protagonist’s ambition leading them into danger and biting off more than they can chew, an underestimation of the supernatural, a baffling delusion of immunity that they too will not get harmed as those who came before them. The fear of obscurity and professional irrelevance outweighs any potential jeopardy to their life. Early in their investigation, they get injured, but are not dissuaded. Helen gets a cut from a razor blade stuck in candy, which happens later to the remake’s protagonist who initially gets injured in a less alarming way. (Neither movie explains the true origin of these tampered candies though it is implied to be Candyman or an offering/trap left for him.)
Another similarity between the protagonists is how they approach the legend believing that they are outsiders and only intellectually interested instead of intimately connected. The protagonists unwittingly seem tied to Daniel. The remake’s protagonist shares the same profession as Daniel, which is underexplored—they are both artists. They also have a spiritual heritage of black men in danger. Eagle-eyed IMDBers can extrapolate another factor, but I will not spoil it here. Helen is implied to be his reincarnated lover. Think Francis Ford Coppola’s “Dracula” (1992) with Helen as Mina and Daniel as Dracula. Her unique reaction to Daniel’s presence lends credence to this theory.
Helen is more of an outsider as a white woman going to a black community and acts alternately as an anthropologist in the first third and a savior in the denouement doing what the entire community could not do. She even hopes that she will be mistaken for a cop, the only authority figure that she dares to impersonate consciously. Power for these protagonists look different. The sequel’s protagonist is tired of being a supplicant and dependent, unintimidating, swallowing insults. He is a servant with the constant threat of exile if he behaves bad, but he can behave badly, he just does not want the consequence. The only role left is a trope, the unemployed black man.
Helen is not a servant, but she never consciously embraces her anger. She accepts her subservient role as a wife and student. One reading of “Candyman” is that Helen’s personality has split, and she had to abandon her gender and race to find a stereotypical, but acceptable way for her violent tendencies to begin to emerge so she can express her anger. Daniel is a manifestation of her suppressed emotions. After all, we only see Daniel kill one person from her perspective otherwise she is the only person in every crime scene, and there is no video evidence. Candyman could be her. Candyman plays the role of her violent, asocial fantasy double who can act in a way that is not an option for a person socialized to be a white cis woman, docile, subservient, uncompetitive, never angry. He also proposes to make all her dreams come true. He promises that she will become a legend. He is a devoted husband who gives her a child. He is her literal dark double, her other half, the person that she sees in the mirror.
It is also plausible that when she cut her hand, she got infected with a hallucinogenic drug, which gradually caused the blackouts, violent behavior and consciousness. It would explain her formication. Alternatively it could be a result of being hit on the head.
I do not adhere to these theories that I am proposing. When she is committed to the asylum for a month, the child is still missing, and we see him through Daniel’s eyes, not hers. Every other scene could be attributed to Helen being an unreliable narrator except that one. Even the denouement could be interpreted as a change of heart when Helen decided to interrupt her plans to commit a homicide/suicide so the community only witnessed the latter. Daniel is real and The Candyman, who lies, but keeps his promises.
Even though Todd does not appear until forty-four minutes into the ninety-nine-minute film, he dominates the film and becomes an icon, our twentieth century Dracula. The special effects may not hold up, and the green screen is discernible, but Todd is timeless. In abstract, Candyman should make us cringe. He is reminiscent of the villain in “Birth of a Nation” (1915), the black man who threatens white women’s virtue. As the villain, he kills black women, kidnaps and mutilates their babies and saves his best manners for the one white woman victim. I should hate him, but Todd embodies an individual, not a trope, an elegant man who sees his murder as an escape from racism.
Only in death can he resume pursuing the life that he chose to lead. His afterlife mirrors his life. He wants what he wants without apology. In life, Daniel may have been an elitist jerk who looked down on others because of his wealth and talent. He thought that he was special. Love is love so he discarded generational wisdom. Like the protagonists, he believes that he is immune danger. As a phantom, he is. His death does not define him. His desires do. As horrible as his death is, he sees it as an act of empowerment that he offers to Helen and this baby. Similar to the ancestors who chose the ocean, he turned the tables, not for vengeance or as a conscious choice, but found a way as a spectre to truly live as a free person with no boundaries. For Daniel, it is better to be dead than a black person alive in the US! “Why do you want to live? If you had learned just a little from me, you would not beg to live. I am rumor. It is a blessed condition, believe me. To be whispered about at street corners. To live in other people’s dreams, but not have to be.” TO NOT HAVE TO BE!
I had hoped that the sequel would explore this theme further. In the original, a white woman hears the call of death as a welcome invitation because the filmmaker sees her as oppressed. How many other oppressed people would find Daniel’s words seductive? Candyman confirms our deepest suicidal ideation to opt out of the futile struggle of daily life in a system designed to fool us into thinking that we can escape, but is actually toying with us. We want to stop hearing others taunt us and just live without societal limits. Unfortunately it is an amoral life. A vengeful ghost is far more respectable. Todd and Clive Barker created Candyman—the backstory told in the film and the original short story that was originally set in Liverpool, England respectively. To make him an archetype, even a sympathetic one, robs him of his humanity, his right as an individual to be flawed, wrong and happy.
Parts of it are still cringeworthy. The black neighborhood is depicted as menacing as men tinier than the protagonist dressed in pastel windbreakers cat call her. Graffiti is art now. See Vanessa Williams now compared to then, and it is obvious that Nia Dacosta recognizes her beauty. The camera loves her whereas in the original, only Madsen got the glamour shots. Also Helen has the nerve to stab someone in her own home then act like the victim. Plus the final scene is supposed to be validating, but the idea of Helen making the ultimate sacrifice to save black people is gagworthy. On the other hand, law enforcement is more disinterested in solving the disappearance of a black child than Helen. She valued that baby as a baby, which is still unusual and a big deal so I am willing to consider signing a waiver on that final scene. I also think that the loss of her hair and burns resemble the close cropped shaved head of a woman with curly hair as if she gets one attribute of blackness in death.
“Candyman” can be classified as a daytime horror film since the majority of the film is set during the day. Even though it feels dated now, the mise en scene was visually arresting and referencing Antonioni. One of the murders was based on a true story, but the victim was shot, not stabbed. The shoddy construction of medicine cabinets is still a thing. Check TikTok. If you watch it, the sequel’s production value and visuals blow the original out of the water, but the original is a classic, a time capsule with film in the camera, phones with cords and in booths, microfiche. Is it no wonder that the favorite part of the sequel is when Todd gets the Marvel de-aging process, and we get to hear his voice again!
