CANDYMAN is one of the best horror films of the '90s, if not the very best. It's unsettling, it's haunting, it's romantic, it's traumatic, all of this at once, so it's no surprise it's based on a story by Clive Barker.
In many ways it's very faithful to that story, but it changes the setting to the Chicago projects in a way that's both powerful and innovative, in that it opens a privileged white woman's eyes to the experience of living without that privilege and problematic in that there's still the archaic trope a black man preying on a white woman, but acknowledging that is simply a well-rounded way of engaging with art. What the film is going for is still so strong and horrific and beautiful.
CANDYMAN is about a grad student named Helen Lyle who is studying urban legends, particularly the myth of the Candyman, a Bloody Mary type figure who supposedly comes when you call his name five times in the mirror. As she investigates, the line between myth and reality begins to blur, until the Candyman comes for her, insulted by her disbelief, and strips away everything in her life in hopes that her need to die by his hook will be all she has left.
It's a movie about urban folklore and why we tell these stories, why we need to attribute them to things we don't understand, to place names and faces to random horrors, and about how stories can permeate the collective consciousness to such a degree that they become indistinguishable from reality, and in this case, simply become real. Tony Todd is pitch perfect as the Candyman. He has that unmistakable booming, low rumble of a voice that also has a melancholic softness to it. He's sinister and tragic all at once, there's such a sadness to him that evokes the classic monsters, particularly the Phantom of the Opera. I was always sold on the beauty of this movie but never got just how scary it was until I got the chance to see it on the big screen and it was TERRIFYING. Simply a gorgeous film. One of the best to ever do it.