YMMV / Candyman (2021)

• Alternative Character Interpretation.
  • Whether Burke is a Well-Intentioned Extremist working for the sake of justice for black people or just some hypocritical bigot taking out his own frustration on people who haven't directly wronged him.
  • Is Candyman capable of caring for or defending the Black community as Burke hopes he will? Or is he an amoral force of destruction? The movie's finale could support both interpretations: the Candyman sparing Brianna and slaughtering the racist policemen seems to support Burke's belief, but it could also be a means for the Candyman to leave someone capable of spreading his legend (especially as his last words in the film are "Tell everyone"). And keep in mind Candyman's entire motivation for killing people was never race related. It's because the summoning ritual mocks his death and suffering.
  • Does Candyman recruit the souls of those who die unjust deaths, or does he enslave them? Or for that matter is he exactly like the original short story version, a complete Manipulative Bastard that has stolen the faces of persecuted black people to feed on the belief of an oppressed community? See They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot for more.
• Americans Hate Tingle: The movie itself got panned in France because of it being seen as plagiarizing the original movie and being too political.
• Awesome Art: The beautiful shadow puppet segments depicting flashbacks. This article by Syfy talking about Manual Cinema, the artist collective that produced them, reveals everything about the puppets were 100 percent practical, with no CG.
• Awesome Music:
  • The use of Destiny's Child's "Say My Name" in the first teaser, especially with Peele giving it a suspenseful twist like "I Got Five On It". It also helps that he mixes it with "It Was Always You, Helen" from the original movie.
  • The score by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe is no slouch either, in particular the end credits theme, a stripped-down and haunting reprisal of Philip Glass's iconic theme from the original film, "Music Box". The score itself can be considered a companion piece to the Doctor Sleep score composed by the Newton Brothers released a year and half earlier.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The suicide of Brianna's father which, aside from a throw away line hinting it as her Freudian Excuse for why she can't leave Anthony, has no further relevance to the plot and is quickly forgotten.
• Director Displacement: A lot of people (particularly media outlets) refer to this as a Jordan Peele film. He is the co-writer and producer but not the director; Nia DaCosta is. Though DaCosta did get a bit more attention focused on her when she became the first Black female director to top the domestic box office as a result of the film's success.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Anthony's girlfriend is called Brianna, and Anthony himself is later savagely murdered by police, who Brianna then kills by summoning Candyman. Although filmed in late summer and fall of 2019, by the time of the film's release, protests had erupted about the killing of Breonna Taylor in a botched police raid in March 2020, making the name choice feel deliberately, even though it wasn't (and the spelling is different).
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Brianna's Genre Savvy moment becomes this considering producer Jordan Peele takes the gag up to eleven in his next project.
  • Yahya Abdul-Mateen II gets a hook on his hand. He stars in the Aquaman superhero films, who is a hero notorious for having a Hook Hand.
  • Transformers fans will recognize Unicron and the Fallen in this film. ^note Creator/Colman Domingo was Unicron and Tony Todd was the Fallen.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The clip of Anne-Marie clapping her hands and going, “No. Don’t say that.” has become a popular reaction meme to bad news.
  • Video reviewers who try to avoid saying "Candyman" five times when talking about the film.
  • Internet users typing his name 5 times while talking about him and mashing random buttons on the keyboard to symbolize Candyman killing them.
• Narm: The shadow-puppet sequences used for recounting the history of Candyman are genuinely atmospheric and affecting... apart from one shot of the young boy as Candyman, still riding his bicycle, hook-hand stuck out behind him.
• One-Scene Wonder: Tony Todd, the OG Candyman, despite the trailers indicating he'd be more prominent in the film, is only shown in the last two or three minutes of the movie. And yet he absolutely smashes it, with his glorious booming voice, commanding presence and his epic "The Reason You Suck" Speech towards the racist cops before he slaughters them that's sure to leave an impact on the audience. His final line is also chilling.
  Candyman: Tell. Everyone.
• Squick: The Slow Transformation that Anthony suffers, with sections of his body practically rotting as the film progresses. The loving close-ups of his decaying, bloody skin don't help.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Earned positive reviews comparable to the original after the previous two sequels were negatively received.
• The Un-Twist: As noted in Ascended Extra, Anthony is the baby from the first film. The film treats this as a reveal, but who Anthony was had been discussed in interviews during the film's delay.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot
  • The implication that Brianna's father was a mentally ill artist who committed suicide is relegated to a brief sequence in a nightmare, when it could have acted as a counterpoint to Anthony's Sanity Slippage and further developed her character beyond being the Only Sane Man (such as highlighting how social injustices play a role in causing mental illness, or giving further depth to why Brianna wants to save Anthony). Interestingly, her father is dressed in yellow when he dies, visually linking him with Candyman's yellow/orange color scheme, but this link isn't elaborated on.
  • The shadow-puppet flashbacks are gorgeous, but don't connect to anything within the context of the story itself (except a brief sequence where young William Burke plays with shadow puppets). It would have been interesting if Anthony's artwork made use of these puppets, more directly representing how he makes sense of the tragedies of the past using art. He could even have been portrayed as being inspired by Burke to use shadow puppets in his exhibition, further demonstrating how Burke's influence guides him closer to the Candyman.
  • Candyman being a Legacy Character. The film never really delves deeper into what is essentially a black man using the suffering of other black people to enslave them to his bidding. Or on the flipside, is Candyman even in control of any of what he's doing? The film deliberately juxtaposes how kind Sherman was before becoming part of the legend with the ghostly murderer he is now.
  • Helen is more or less reduced to a voiceless flashback via shadow puppets that depict her as a mass murderer. It would have been interesting to see her in her ghostly form again taking a more active role in stopping the film's antagonist.
    • An earlier draft of the script had Helen (or more appropriately, Helen's spirit) taking on both the Burke and Sherman!Candyman roles; after being accidentally summoned by Anthony, she begins following him, committing murders to protect Anthony (though inadvertently incriminating him in the process), with the ultimate goal of using him as a host to resurrect Daniel!Candyman - bringing the plot full circle back to Candyman when Daniel!Candyman kidnapped Anthony to form a 'family' with himself, Anthony and Helen.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Considering the film's relatively low budget of $25 million Tony Todd's appearance at the end of the film is astounding, completely surpassing the Unintentional Uncanny Valley that comes with the territory of Digital De-Aging.

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