Review: Candyman (1992)

Some horror movies thrill me. Others disappoint me. Still others make me laugh out loud, whether they are meant to be funny or not. But very few horror movies make me as spitting, throw-shit-at-my-TV mad as Candyman.

I avoided Candyman for a long time, mostly because it's based on a story by Clive Barker (who also acted as executive producer), who was declared "the future of horror" by no less than Stephen King. (Gee, thanks, Steve.) I'd seen the first two Hellraiser movies and found them both to be gory, illogical messes. But I'd heard good (well, better) things about Candyman from a variety of reliable sources, and I've always loved me some Virginia Madsen, so I picked up a used VHS copy and gave the flick a try.

And those sources were right--up to a point.

Madsen plays Helen, a grad student at the University of Illinois-Chicago preparing her thesis on urban legends. She and her friend Bernadette (Kasi Lemmons) stumble across the legend of the Candyman, who, if you say his name five times into a mirror, will appear and wreck havoc with his hook hand. (Why five times? It only took three times to summon Beetlejuice, and Mary Worth was supposed to appear only if you said her name repeatedly.)

Helen's investigation leads her and Bernadette to the Cabrini-Green housing projects, where a young mother (Vanessa Williams) fills them in on a murder supposedly committed by Candyman. A rival at the college helpfully tells Helen and her philandering professor husband Candyman's story. He was the cultured son of a former slave who had an affair with a white woman, got chased by an mob into the Cabrini-Green neighborhood (which wouldn't have been called Cabrini-Green for several more decades, but okay, I'm nitpicking--again) and got killed by having his hand cut off "with a rusty sawblade and being smeared with honey so that he'd be stung to death by bees. (Doesn't that seem like an awful lot of work just to kill somebody?)

Helen continues to probe Candyman's story and, while checking out the site of another murder victim, is brutally beaten by a gang of thugs whose leader brandishes a hook and claims that HE is really Candyman. One police report later, the thugs are rounded up and thrown in jail.

Up to this point, Candyman is well-paced and stylish (despite the parenthetical nitpicks above), engaging the audience with restrained storytelling; smart, subtle acting (especially from Madsen and Williams); and creepy visuals that make great use of the Chicago cityscape (a point I may be prejudiced on, as a native of the Windy City). So far, so good.

Then Candyman himself shows up. And this movie goes straight to shit in record time.

Candyman (Tony Todd) confronts Helen in a parking garage, blaming her for pressing charges against the thugs and thus weakening belief in his legend. He also implores Helen to "be my victim." Don't know how Helen could resist such a charming invitation, but when she does, Candyman gets nasty, kidnapping the young mother's baby and framing Helen for that crime and a bunch of seriously violent murders. (And Kasi Lemmons gets to find out why it's not so much fun to play "the best friend" role in horror movies.)

In just those few moments, Candyman goes from being an intelligent, thoughtful thriller to being a gory, illogical mess.

In other words, Candyman becomes a Clive Barker movie.

All of the good will generated by the first half of the movie, with its sophisticated, intellectual approach to the material, is blasted away by the second half, which gives us a villain who is nothing more than a less witty, more pretentious Freddy Krueger. And while the concept of an urban legend taking physical form through the strength of belief is intriguing, the back half of this movie can't do anything more interesting with that idea than serve up typical slasher-flick splatter.

Candyman also abandons all pretense of being logical and reasonable and raises far more questions than it could possibly answer. Like...Why does Candyman kidnap the baby in order to make Helen do his will, then continue to threaten the baby when she finally gives in? How will making Helen appear to be a serial killer make her love him (since she's apparently the reincarnation of his lost lover)? If Candyman was killed by a racist mob, why does he spend his time offing people in the projects? Shouldn't he be over on Michigan Avenue knocking off tourists or something? Why doesn't cut up the guy pretending to be him? (You'd think he'd be offended.) Are urban legends really as flammable as this movie implies? And why the fuck is he called Candyman in the first place? (Aside from a bag of chocolates with razor blades jammed into them, we get no clue.)

The only thing worse than a bad horror movie is a good horror movie that goes bad. And Candyman turns very bad very quickly, blowing an opportunity to evolve the slasher film to a higher form, to elevate it above the rest of its less-ambitious brothers and sisters, to make not just a good horror film, but a good FILM, period. Instead, Candyman gets lazy around the midway point and goes on autopilot from there, and I couldn't have been more disappointed.

(NOTE: despite being a gory, illogical mess, Candyman still did well enough to generate a couple of sequels.)