Did Nia DaCosta’s ambitious sequel match up to the 1992 original? And what about the newly revised and modernised lore?This article contains spoilers for CandymanAs surely as the sun keeps rising in the east,
Hollywood will keep remaking horror classics to inconsistent returns, but there’s a better argument to be made for exhuming and reanimating 1992’s canonized Candyman than most.
The adaptation of Clive Barker’s short story The Forbidden was so forward-thinking for its time that in many respects, we’ve only caught up to it now; its resentment of gentrification has only grown more commonplace in the mainstream, and same goes for its canny insight into how black people’s suffering gets codified into urban legend. Rather than reiterating the major bullet points, Nia DaCosta’s new film takes the original as a jumping-off point, first and foremost by trading protagonist perspectives.