At one point in Nia DaCosta’s Candyman, a white critic named Finley (Rebecca Spence) stalks the gallery where protagonist Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II)’s Candyman art is being exhibited. She pauses in front of his work, a mirror that opens to unveil his candy-colored paintings, illuminated in black light. As he over-explains his intentions and theme, Finley rolls her eyes and calls his work didactic. That it’s too literal. The way she reduces his work to a few works of disdain, only to later be interested when there’s a double homicide at the gallery, is, of course, in itself a critique. But she does have a point: it’s only when Anthony fully understands the legacy of Candyman that his pop-colored art takes on a darker hue and becomes something interesting.

By then, though, it’s too late.

In this way, Anthony provides an intriguing mirror to Virginia Madsen’s Helen Lyle, the protagonist of the original Candyman (1992). Like her, Anthony hears about the urban legend of Candyman and becomes obsessed with it. Like her, he enters what’s left of Cabrini-Green in order to get inspiration for his artistic endeavors. Like her, he doesn’t understand what he’s getting himself into. Both of them come from a place of relative privilege, as Anthony lives with his girlfriend/artist agent Brianna (Teyonah Parris) in the expensive highrises that were created from the soil of Cabrini-Green. But Anthony is also a mirror image of Candyman, in that unlike Helen, he’s a Black man in a world filled with white supremacy and violence. And his importance to Cabrini-Green and the Candyman legacy gets more complicated as the narrative unfurls its (unsurprising, if you remember names from the original) secrets.

What Candyman does well is investigate and interrogate those two sides through the continued thematic device of mirrors. The way the film utilizes reflections creates some truly fantastic, dizzying and surprising visual images, but this duality is also inherently important to the narrative.

The film opens with a young kid meeting his version of the Candyman; a man named Sherman Fields (Michael Hargrove) who was beaten to death by police when a white kid was injured by candy hiding a razor in it. After Sherman was murdered, he’s proven innocent when more razor-candy are found. He’s just another death in the legacy of the Candyman and becomes an urban legend just like Daniel Robitaille (Tony Todd), the original Candyman. This version is first introduced as a reflection in a laundromat window and after this cold open, we’re quickly transported to the present; highrises poke from the top of the screen down, as if we’re glimpsing them through a mirror while Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe’s playful inversion of the Candyman theme plays. This opening plays well, inverting the original’s overhead introduction to Chicago and making it feel as if we’re seeing a different side of the story.

From here, we’re introduced to Anthony and Brianna, who have a loving relationship. But Anthony struggles with artist block and gallery owner Clive (Brian King) needs a new version of Anthony’s art. Which leads Anthony to the remnants of Cabrini-Green and a bee sting that begins to rot and transform his hand. As he digs deeper into the Candyman mythology, people start dying and he begins transforming into the same kind of trauma that has claimed the long line of Candymen since Robitaille.

Written by Jordan Peele & Win Rosenfeld and Nia DaCosta, Candyman is brimming with ideas and themes. In its slight 90 minute runtime (padded with some absolutely fantastic but oftentimes needlessly exposition-heavy shadow puppetry), the film covers a lot of ground, including the necessities of being a sequel while creating its own sense of mythology and presenting a mirrored ideology to the sometimes messy original...all while tackling socio-political issues and presenting a clear narrative.

Sometimes this works fantastically, particularly with the way it handles trauma. It's understood that the folks of Cabrini-Green don't discuss Candyman or their trauma stemming from both the ghostly killer or the reasons the killers continue to exist. This is revealed in the trailer and Vanessa Williams’ gifable hand motion to stop Anthony from even mentioning him. The idea is that if no one talks about him, Candyman will be kept at bay. But the fact is he, like the trauma that created him, is always always there, looking out through mirrors as society passes him by and tries to forget him. But by not talking about each iteration of the specter, the trauma involving their deaths never gets discussed. And so the cycle of violence continues, in the same way the cycle of violence perpetrated on Black bodies continues. It sits there and festers, much like Anthony’s ignored, but rotting, hand; it’s a pain people don't face until they’re forced to confront it head-on and speak its name.

The film also tackles the nature of urban legends and how the details are often fuzzy as they are passed on from person to person. Bernard Rose’s Candyman itself has become an urban legend, probably it's most well-known because it happened to a white woman. And the story became about her; a form of gentrification and white washing. This idea of gentrification and white people taking black culture is hilariously explored in one scene where a group of white high school students gather in a bathroom to say his name. They've taken the Black urban legend and say the words without understanding their context or meaning. It reminded me of the ways in which drag culture pulls from Black queer culture and how words like queen and tea, etc., are now widely said without realizing their origins.

Only here the retribution comes quick and red, filtered through the mirror of a makeup compact.

Candyman also tries to reckon with police violence and general violence placed on Black bodies, juxtaposing the urban legend spawned from each iteration of the Candyman with the true story behind each myth. If anything this becomes the throughline of the film, from the opening credits of Sherman’s version of the Candyman to the ending, and it provides the most intriguing thematic motif as the credits roll.

Unfortunately, Candyman’s attempts to juggle each of these narrative balls isn’t always successful and it might have bitten off more than it can chew. Its horror never reaches the heights of the original, even though it’s probably more thematically interesting. One particularly beautifully filmed kill and a few moments of cringe-filled body horror aside, the horror elements feel a bit undercooked. But I was enthralled the entire time and I look forward to the copious think pieces that it will birth, dissecting the ways in which 2021’s version mirrors and interrogates the original. It’s a solid effort from Nia DaCosta that will hopefully have fans clamoring to say her name.