CandyMan: Say My Name.

Who doesn't want to in one way or another have their name ring out? To be heard, recognized and seen.. It’s the motivation behind James Cagney's primal scream in “White Heat”, the fued in Christopher Nolan's “The Prestige”, I suspect it’s woefully behind many of Kanye West antics, and it underlies the story of infidelity in Destiny Child's “Say My Name”. If anything in particular stuck out and reached out to me from Nia Dacosta and Jordan Peele's reincarnation of “Candyman”..it was the words “Say my name”. It stuck out because it was said quite often and repeated in various iterations ad-nasuem, I believe it was even used in the trailer. It also stuck out this because in and enough itself for me it held a certain power. I think anyone who feels voiceless, who feels unheard, unseen, unrecognized knows the power of these words. Being hurt is one thing, being silenced as well is insult to injury. Much of this colors and undergirds the themes in Candyman. These few words also represented my problems with the film. So much of what doesn’t work about Candyman was there in an obnoxiously repetitive habit of being on the nose. Preachy to the point of inducing laughter. The movie never fully trust itself, all the best parts of this movie and I think there are a few more than there are bad ) existed when this movie trusted the story to tell itself. Trusted the actors, trusted its own writing, trusted the imagery. The worst parts of it were when it felt it the need to repeatedly call out its themes and it's commentary directly to us through tired, weak exposition that it then has to step back and raise his hands up and say “Hey we all know this is a little corny but nonetheless here it is AGAIN”

The opening of the movie is very effective. A genial, but misunderstood man hides in the walls of the Cabrini Green projects, the police suspect he is the man behind razor blades appearing in children’s candy, they also didn’t care until it was a white child who was hurt. Sherman Fields ( the black man the cops are after) is instantly a empathetic figure, one might branch out beyond what they see and think that the inner sanctity of those walls present may be the only safe space for this man and that maybe it was the previous iterations of the candy man that softly spoke to him and suggested this be a place he come to, the movie misses an opportunity to show it, but it feels probable. When two grown women were down there he stays hidden, but when he sees an opportunity to speak to a child, he comes forth offering the gifts that made him famous, ( alot of this movie speaks every so slightly to the importance for doing what’s for you it just never congeals) the kid initially taking aback by a man coming out of the walls suddenly screams.... This scream is heard by the police they enter into the building and they do what police are known to do. Its a very effective opening because it instantly and without a lot of heavy imagery or exposition calls back to the fragility of black life in this country, the idea that anything as simple as as falling in love or bringing joy to children can end with your life being taken away it's tragic enough on its own add to that that this child had to grow up most likely believing that in some way he played a role in causing candy man's death is yet another form of tragedy.

We are from here introduced to Yahya's Anthony McCoy and Teyonah Parris's Brianna Cartwright as a young aspirational black couple, and then to Brianna's brother Troy and his boyfriend, They join Brianna and Anthony for a light dinner and some wine (mostly wine) and here is where the movie shows its first flaw and what will be a continued theme, and that is the constant need, the impetus to want to beat the audience over the head with its central ideas and themes and the clumsy ways it finds some of its storytelling. It happens here with Troy giving us the backstory to the original candy man as a way of inciting incident for Anthony to begin his journey by way of a candlelit ghost story..It feels very “we were looking for ways to find Anthony’s way into this and got bored”. It's also one of those things where the movie understands what it's doing and so again it steps back from it almost with a sly smile saying “I know this is silly but we have to do this”, but the thing is there appears readily to be a number of ways you could have had this happen without doing it in such a hammer it to a nail type of way. That being said with much in this movie for me many things that it did wrong it almost instantaneously came back with something that is good and what was interesting about that initial interaction was the way that Anthony responds to it as compared to everyone else, especially when you look at everyone else's situations everyone seems to be. All the others in the setting seem happy with where they're at in their life and their positions they seem to have found their way and found themselves and know themselves in these ways and it's said in various ways in the in the script that doesn't feel heavy or spotlighty. Anthony is immediately grabbed by the story because he feels its power, and he longs for it, it's power the fact that it's going on this long, that it lasted this long ..this story, the fact that it's actually real and that there's information behind it which suggest it’s legacy he feels and fills it it and you can see it on Yahya's muscular and angled face.

An essential part of this movie It's Yahya's detailed nuanced performanc. While it’s not not greatest I’ve ever seen it's not just some run of the mill horror performance either. The layers he adds in the ability to convey both vulnerability and rage and sometimes in the same place is stupendous. There is the scene in the apartment with the white critic where Yahya stunningly plays in this very strange place where he is both possessed and still fully himself in a limbo of recognizing what hes doing while not completely recognizing what he doing. When he suggest that the critic saying Candyman's name it is emblematic of all the things the movie wants to say about the nuance of the relational hurt, pain, and rage behind not only black people and white people's relational dynamics but the artist snd the critic. You see a childish glee but also some pull back, and it’s ever so slight…I marveled..he will continue this kind of work and other types throughout this movie I cannot talk enough of or about. His performance alone is enough to give this movie a lot more credibility than it deserves and it isn’t the only one.

Vanessa Williams is in this movie five minutes,, it is a very very good five minutes. It continues the films trend of it’s best storytelling coming not from it’s constant cueing to messaging and heavy exposition but it’s actors. It was every bit as good as the trailer usage of her implies, its only flaw being she isn’t in there more, especially since it really would make more sense to focus on her aspect of the story so it feels more earned. Coleman Domingo is another who has a very similar story in the flaws of the movie, for his part also adds an important aspect to the vitality of a story. His speech at the end is magnificent and he eats up every scene he is in. Actors and imagery are what combined to make this movie for me work on some level. The body work is absolutely sensational and Dacosta understands the importance of pictures and poses to terror as well as the importance of rhe body.. How people move through the world has alot to do woth how we see them as does decay. There are alot of great shots of shaking hands, long shots of a particular expression, the willingness to hold it to let it retain its power. After all imagery both in lifeless things and people is just as much a part storytelling as the words, and DaCosta for her part understands the power of both actor and Image to get across a message in certain ways and the ones that work WORK, especially in combination with Robert A A Lowes music. The imagery and the exposition and dialogue that don't are the reason I didn't come away feeling like this was a new horror classic, but merely a good horror movie. The Horror and or Terror in this movie as with all movies is subjective, and for me most of it was highly effective. A lot of the shots and images meant to horrify or terrify us were well done because they lived in this space of somewhere between light and shadow, between good and bad, sweet and repelling twisted, gnarled, and beautiful. The usage of artist Kara Walkers work is the light snd shadow, as well as the gallery space where Candyman darts in-between. There is Colman Domingos William, whose connection to these themes I'll leave out for the sake of spoilers. There is the Candy itself, sweet but with razor blades, and Sherman Fields the latest iteration of Candyman who is also sweet but repells even when he doesn't mean to, and there is Yahya..one half of a very distinctive and good looking body and face scarred, picked at, bleeding and festering . This particular works because it's not a commentary that expoits a zeitgeist and deals on tropes about certain kind of people and these are the parts of the film that work. These are the parts where the movie seemed to trust what it does enough to just be and existas a horror movie that finds the political through the persona, but they're constantly interrupted by tacked unnecessary speeches about gentrification, and what black people “don't do, and murders of white people that seem to be purely for the enjoyment of watching white folks get theirs. I too like watching white people especially get their come-uppance but it has to be in a situation like Wes Cravens “The People Under the Stairs” where that come-uppance has story and build-up its not just random teenagers and self important critics who also happen to kinda be telling the truth about certain types of art. Many of the killls here are empty, they looked good, I like the mirror shots and such but with nothing behind them its just mechanics gears and bolts with no emotive power and no terror or horror. The terror in this movie comes from things like the acting and from the bones of the story and the power of suggestion earlier spoken to in tapes that feature the voice of Virginia Madsens Helen Lyle. From the wonderful usage of space lies the elevator where and inverted Candyman looks down on Anthony, and from the body horror of rotting flesh.

The power of the suggestion lies in the invocative power of legend, that is the summoning, Had the creators stuck to that and believed in that I think you'd have and excellent film, as is it's pretty good but also pretty flawed, but in my opinion so was the original. I must say there has been a strange but fascinating revisionist look back at Bernard Rose's original film that acknowledges rightfully what works in that film, but also maybe exaggerates some of what it did and how good it was. While the original and it’s sequel (Candyman: Farewell to The Flesh) are beguiling, haunting, and sensual films as well a a couple of my favorite horror films I still see them as very very flawed and sort of incomplete. I find the storytelling to at times be disjointed, the dualogue to be weak in many places and its depiction of Helen flirts with white saviorism though it never commits to that in anyway that endangers it. Rose's Candyman is just effective at what it's supposed to be doing which is in different ways the same as I view this movie. Another time I might have to have this conversation about the ways in which we look at current black art and the ways that connects back to a cyclical condition of black people being hardest on our own artist, especially in comparison to the way that we look at our white counterparts and in an essence (even though not necessarily on purpose) end up giving them passes for the same things that we come down hard on our own artist for, but that's a conversation for another time for now I'll say that the reason why that Rose's works slightly better and ONLY slightly better than this one for me is because it unlike this rendition, the 1992 version did believe in the invocative power of legend and it did believe in the power of saying a name and it led with that. This one felt that it had to add further ingredients that the people involved weren't really in a position to tell in this particular way just yet ... I think anyone can understand the want and desire to be heard to have one's name called out over time and it's an effective tool to use and an interesting tool to use to flip on its head and say what happens when that urge goes too far and what happens when that urge is never answered and becomes too hungry and what is that rage turned into - and that was the more interesting movie…. For now we're left with something that merely lives in the name of it but doesn't quite conjure it.