Candyman

Young affluent academic Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) and her colleague Bernadette (Kasi Lemmons) are working on a paper on urban legends and begin researching a local phenomenon, the "Candyman", who is said to murder people who invoke him with the hook he has instead of a hand.

Her husband Trevor (Xander Berkeley) and his colleagues are scornful, considering it "academic Bolivia" but the pair double down and dig into the one supposed killing they can link to a real event, travelling to the scene of the crime.

Here in the "projects" amongst poverty and crime the Candyman is very real. That reality begins to seep into Helen's life.

Well. I hadn't expected this to stand up so well. I saw it once back in the day and remembered very much liking it then but have never seen it since.

It's very 90s pre-digital view of urban decay in Chicago with lots of the standard "projects" stereotypes of filth graffiti, poverty and gangs but uses them to set tone rather than lazily to portray the people as "bad", very much the opposite.

There's precious little violent material you'd expect from what is nominally sold as a "slasher movie". Instead it's the content of the characters' academic thesis acted out for real while remaining unwritten.

What does it take to become the whisper in the hallway, the small god to whom offerings are made in uncared for places, the terror to keep the terrible in check?

If you've never seen this, check it out. It stands alongside more modern fare such as the output of Jordan Peele in being unsettling for reasons of ideas more than actual nastiness on screen. It's urban folk horror twenty years before that could have been considered "a thing".

The sparse Philip Glass score is great and the use of far overhead shots to set scenes really a visual treat.

Highly recommended 10/10.