The trailer for Nia DaCosta’s delayed Candyman remake has arrived, and the footage brings with it a slew of new information about the horror movie’s twisted story. Released in 1992, director Bernard Rose’s classic horror movie Candyman moved the action of horror author Clive Barker’s source short story “The Forbidden” from working-class Liverpool to the under-resourced projects of Illinois. The infamous plot of the tale, however, stayed the same.
Candyman told the tale of Helen, a well-off graduate student whose study of urban legends leads her to the notoriously under-resourced Cabrini Green project in inner-city Chicago. The residents lived in fear of the eponymous hook-handed monster, an unforgettable slasher villain played by the imposing Tony Todd. However, where earlier slasher villains like Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees were summoned by teens having premarital sex and taking drugs, Candyman appeared when anyone was daring - and foolish - enough to say his moniker five times in the mirror.
An inventive, dark take on the Bloody Mary urban myth, Candyman gave Todd’s villain a tragic backstory that made his motivation to wreak bloody vengeance more understandable and believable than the average slasher villain. Rose’s horror classic also offered some canny commentary on class stratification and gentrification, with Helen wanting to study the folklore of Cabrini Green’s residents but refusing to live in the area herself in classic NIMBY fashion. The story was timely and terrifying in the early ‘90s and was recently remade by future The Marvels' helmer Nia DaCosta. This 2021 Candyman remake has been dubbed a spiritual sequel to the original, but by the looks of the movie’s recently-released third trailer, it changes a lot of details about the story.
The Candyman Has A New Origin Story
In the original 1992 movie, Candyman was the son of a slave who worked as an artist and fell in love with a wealthy white man’s daughter, eventually fathering a child with her. Her enraged father set a lynch mob on the innocent man, with the group maiming him before leaving him to be stung to death by bees. This moving backstory made the killer more sympathetic than a lot of his slasher contemporaries, and the remake looks to double down on this approach by revisiting a twist cut from Nightmare On Elm Street’s 2010 remake. The Candyman’s new origin story turns him into a harmless local oddball who handed out candy to children, only for him to be brutalized, tortured, and murdered by police officers when a kid finds razor blades in their candy. Candyman’s name is soon cleared when razor blades keep turning up after his murder, but by then the damage has been done and the urban legend is set in motion according to the remake’s version of events.
Candyman's M.O. Is Still The Same
While the remake is changing Candyman’s origin story dramatically, the way that his killings operate remains the same. The original horror movie saw Candyman appear when anyone said his name five times in a mirror, with many victims summoning the title character through dares and pranks. According to the trailer, this is still how the villain appears and operates in the remake.
The Candyman Hero Is Now An Artist
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s hero in the Canydman remake appears, judging by the trailer’s glimpses of Candyman’s action, to be an artist interested in the folklore surrounding Cabrini Green’s resident boogeyman. In the original movie, the heroine, Helen, was a white woman and a graduate student studying folklore, whereas here, the hero is a Black man who works as a fine artist (and possibly photographer). It's an interesting shift that changes the character’s motivations to investigate the burn legend, as this horror movie hero is more interested in the artistic, rather than sociological, implications of the Candyman myth.
Candyman Is No Longer An Artist
While the movie’s hero is now an artist, the Candyman trailer gives viewers no reason to believe that Candyman has kept the artistic aspect of his character. Judging by the trailer, he was a kooky-but-harmless figure during his life, but the remake doesn't lean into his work as an artist the way the original movie did. 1992’s Candyman featured a mural of him and his lost love, but no similar work appears in this teaser.
Candyman’s Quest Against Gentrification Is A Lot More Literal
In the original movie, there was an implication that Candyman’s reign of terror over the residents of Cabrini Green would soon extend to include the well-off newcomers who were gentrifying the area. However, the remake (in a move that should surprise no one, given the involvement of satirical horror legend Jordan Peele) leans hard into this element. Here, many of the apparent victims of Candyman are hip young artists seen throughout the trailer, with one even being dragged through the bare concrete floor of a swanky gallery.
Candyman's Revenge Is Also More Direct
Candyman is still trying to obtain vengeance on the living in this retelling, but the objects of his ire are a lot easier to discern. Since the Candyman trailer’s flashback depicting his death appears to take place in the last forty years (at most), it is no stretch to presume that the corrupt cops responsible are still alive. For now, at least, as the trailer sees one boy in blue lose his face (and, presumably, life) to Candyman’s hook hand in a more cut-and-dried iteration of violent vengeance than the original iteration of the character ever got to enjoy.
Candyman May Still Take Over A New Host
In the original movie, Candyman gradually wooed Helen over to the dark side and eventually convinced her to join him in haunting the residents. Helen’s death saw her become his eventual accomplice. However, until that point, the character was mostly mentally tortured and only once was physically assaulted by Candyman, where the remake appears to take another route.
The Candyman Transformation Looks Slower (& More Painful)
The original Candyman may have been able to control Helen by leading her to blackout numerous times throughout the movie, but what he wasn’t able to do was cause the sort of David Cronenberg-style body horror seen throughout the new trailer. The remake’s hero appears to transform into the new Candyman slowly and painfully, judging by the limited glimpses seen in the trailer’s footage. If the new trailer is anything to go by, the remake will see its hero become Candyman as his hand’s skin peels away to make way for the trademark hook in its place, where Helen became his accomplice via psychological rather than psychical means.
