I’ve not been a fan of mainstream horror films for many, many years. However, recent filmmakers like Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us) and John Krasinski (A Quiet Place) have really won me over. So, naturally, when Peele himself decided to endorse and produce the upcoming horror film by Nia DaCosta, it automatically became one of my most anticipated films of the year.
Candyman is said to be a modern reimagining of the cult classic. The film is also billed as a spiritual successor to the 1992 film (think what HBO’s Watchmen is to the Zack Snyder film). The trailer, which dropped in February, sent shivers down my spine. And earlier today, director Nia DaCosta unveiled an animated prologue to the film that is absolutely haunting.
Taking to Twitter, DaCosta wrote:
CANDYMAN, at the intersection of white violence and black pain, is about unwilling martyrs. The people they were, the symbols we turn them into, the monsters we are told they must have been.
Check out the animated prologue of Candyman below:
https://twitter.com/NiaDaCosta/status/1273293842113089536?s=20
Official synopsis of Candyman:
For as long as residents can remember, the housing projects of Chicago’s Cabrini Green neighborhood were terrorized by a word-of-mouth ghost story about a supernatural killer with a hook for a hand, easily summoned by those daring to repeat his name five times into a mirror. In present day, a decade after the last of the Cabrini towers were torn down, visual artist Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II; HBO’s Watchmen, Us) and his girlfriend, gallery director Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris; If Beale Street Could Talk, The Photograph), move into a luxury loft condo in Cabrini, now gentrified beyond recognition and inhabited by upwardly mobile millennials.
With Anthony’s painting career on the brink of stalling, a chance encounter with a Cabrini Green old-timer (Colman Domingo; HBO’s Euphoria, Assassination Nation) exposes Anthony to the tragically horrific nature of the true story behind Candyman. Anxious to maintain his status in the Chicago art world, Anthony begins to explore these macabre details in his studio as fresh grist for paintings, unknowingly opening a door to a complex past that unravels his own sanity and unleashes a terrifyingly viral wave of violence that puts him on a collision course with destiny.
Candyman is directed by Nia DaCosta from a script co-written by DaCosta, Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld. It stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Aquaman) and Teyonah Parris (If Beale Street Could Talk).
