Writing On The Wall, The Whisper In The Classroom: Candyman (1992)

Candyman (1992)
Rating: ****1/2
Staring:  Virginia Madsen, Xander Berkeley and Tony Todd

They will say that I have shed innocent blood. What's blood for, if not for shedding? 

- Daniel Robitaille, The Candyman

Candyman (1992). The one horror film that best describes my fascination for legends, as well as what I see as a modernized embodiment of such tales: horrifying yet cautionary, irrational yet important, tackling more than superstition.

The basic structure of an urban legend: babysitters, mirrors and
monsters.

After hearing the story from a teenager she's interviewing, Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen), a doctoral student doing a thesis on urban legends and folklores, becomes fascinated by a mythological figure known as The Candyman, who appears every time somebody utter his name five times in front of a mirror. She, along with her friend Bernadette, ventures into Cabrini Green, an economically deprived urban setting where a real unsolved murder occurred with a likeness to the legend, and it is there she meets a single mother named Anne-Marie who gives them a little insight on the murder. Helen then comes across with a little boy named Jake who shares to her a story of an autistic boy who, God forbid, got his penis cut off, apparently by the Candyman. The stories seem to be getting more and more bizarre for Helen and her friend, to the point that they tried calling out for Candyman but to no result.



Helen Lyle interviews a "believer".

However, things got complicated when a local gang attacks Helen, apparently taking in the boogeyman's name as a moniker for street credit. After surviving the attack, she got the gang leader arrested, thus debunking the legend. Or has she?

Not happy with the "lies" she is spreading, Helen finds herself haunted by the spirit of the Candyman himself, who will stop at nothing to have her as his victim, if she is, however, willing. But until that point, he will leave a trail of murder under her name, tormenting her further down a rabbit hole of disbelief, betrayals and madness.

Brass voice and rust hook never sounded and
looked this good.

Candyman is perhaps one of the finest titles to come out in the early 90s in terms of mainstream slashers by breaking the conventional and bringing something more haunting and mature, despite being straightforward to its horror elements. The layered plot of the film wisely builds tension more favorably than that of gore and carnage; there are hardly any onscreen murders, but in place of them are snippets of bloody bodies and terrified reactions of both victims and witnesses. Racial and gender-based social commentaries are also plastered beautifully all over the direction and theme of the film, with Helen, for one, portrayed as a strong and independent woman willing to go to further heights to make something out of herself. Such actions cruelly lead to downfalls and attacks from both mortal and supernatural threat, up until the fact that her encounters with the monster seem to be more fantastic than realistic, forcing her to question the possibilities of the impossible which she try to fight against rationally.

Castration made shocking: done to a "simple" boy!

The monster himself, played by genre actor Tony Todd, has all the basic characteristic of a Hollywood creation; a horrible past, a disfigurement, sheer immortality and a deadly force. These, though, are only the physical traits of the killer, but what makes him more terrifying is that he somewhat embodies racial intensity, the belittlement of other races of white oppressors that exist even today. He shows that there are little changes to such discrimination from his time to our modern world, implemented in this film with the neglected and the deprived, mostly consisting of African Americans, being segregated to a housing project purposely made to keep them there. 

Anne-Marie (Vanessa Williams) keeps an eye
on meddlers and foes alike.

The relationship between Helen and her ghostly stalker ended somewhere halfway a satire of a tragic love story, with Candyman wishing to bring Helen into his own domain and definition of immortality, going to extreme lengths persuading her to be his victim and to exist as a "rumor" together. Helen, however, tries to fight her fate with the hook, pushing off the advances of the monster while finding more troubles with her life as she begins to realize that she had no more turns to go; her friends are soon murdered, neighbors are frightened by her and deem her insane, and her husband is caught to have abandoned her and moved on to another woman. It later comes to the point that she starts to wonder if giving in to the demands of the very creature that brought so much pain would be a better fate for her. 

Helen's situation gets really terrifying once it juggles the fact that she might be imagining all of this. She was found with a knife on her hand after seeing the real Candyman for the first time, with a dog's severed head next to her and Anne-Marie screaming for her missing baby. Has the obsession over the legend had taken over Helen, or is the boogeyman framing her? Of course, it's soon made obvious that the supernatural is to blame, but her ordeal of questioning her own sanity is just as terrifying.

Violence is toned down here, but that doesn't stop
it from being notorious.

Bernard Rose's direction mixes both the expressive visuals of myth and reality, resulting to a gloomy and gothic atmosphere within the empty (and near-empty) rundown buildings, littered with graffiti depicting the monster of their legend. The slow pacing of the film is surprisingly needed as there are are no tedious blotches thanks to a wonderful performance of both leads, some well-handled camera work and an enriching story. Adding to the subtle yet serious tone of the film is a composition made by Phillip Glass, putting vocal choirs and pipe organ scores to a near-pitch haunting feel to it.

Staying true to Clive Barker's fascinatingly creepy short story "The Forbidden", Candyman (1992) created a stronger mythos and a captivating tale of legends and the consequences for meddling with the unknown. As Barker would say, it maybe low on special effects, but the shock and subtext of this film is the true source of horror. One of the best of 90s slasher.

Bodycount:

1 female killed with a hook (story)

1 baby killed offscreen (story)

1 female mentioned killed with a hook 

1 boy castrated with a hook (flashback)

1 female slaughtered with hook

1 male eviscerated from the back with hook

1 female caught inside a bonfire, succumbs to burns

1 male slaughtered with hook

Total: 8