4/10 A horror movie that places woke political ideology over genuine scares and thrills, “Candyman” does a solid job of connecting to the original 1992 movie, but fails to leave any impact on the current viewer. Before I get into why this movie ultimately falls short, I will start off with the positives. This movie looks very slick and the opening credits beginning with upside down shots of the city (after brilliantly showing the studio logos reversed in a mirror like way) sets the mood right off the bat. The score at the start of the movie sucks you in with its creepy ambience and will have you feeling uneasy right away. The acting gets the job done and there is some strong editing on display. The movie tells stories with paper cutouts projected onto the wall using shadows/lighting, which was a creative and effective way of portraying the stories being told. Finally, the greatest strength, which I hinted at earlier, was how the movie connected to the original horror movie. I re-watched the original trilogy and to be honest, none of the movies were any good but the original was definitely stronger than the two half-baked sequels. Instead of ignoring, ret-conning or changing the original movie, this is a sequel that deeply embraces and acknowledges the original movie and finding a way to do that without feeling forced was excellent. Unfortunately, that is where the positives end. One of the biggest issues this movie struggles with is just how bland and non-scary it is. Not only was I never afraid in the slightest but especially after coming off of “The Night House”, which genuinely terrified me in moments, this felt so by the numbers in comparison. In terms of horror, nothing new is offered here and even most of the violence/death is off screen. A character gets a bad bee sting on his hand and as the infection spreads, I briefly wondered why he didn’t go to a doctor to get checked out but after two seconds of thinking, I easily predicted why this was and ended up being 100% correct. The lack of scares and predictability did nothing to entice or excite me. The other major issue was the movie’s obsession with far left, woke politics. While horror movies have been excellent examples of film makers bringing up political topics (see George A. Romero), you might want to make sure that the political ideology you are bringing up has some merit to it before cramming it into your movie. Instead, we get an anti-white, racist message that predictably also paints all cops as racists. While not surprising, the messaging is extremely heavy handed, tired, played out and factually inaccurate. The couple creative moments are totally overshadowed as the only thing you will remember when the movie ends is how disappointing this was and how of course the average moronic film critic on Rotten Tomatoes will blindly praise this for political reasons. If you want a horror film with stronger political messages you can do much better than this and if you want a horror film that actually scares you, you can also do much better than this uninspired, generic, forgettable disappointment. This is the cinematic equivalent of candy corn with the entertainment lasting as long as the flavor in a Double Bubble does.
#BlandyMan / #BEEnThereDoneThat / #BlackMirrors / #SweetsInTheBelly / #McCoyStory / #LegendOfTheTenStings
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