Candyman (1992)

Directed by

Bernard Rose

Genre

horror film, psychological thriller, slasher film, thriller film, hood film, ghost film

Country

United Kingdom, United States

Runtime

1h 39m

Rated

R

Rating

6.7 of 10 from 1,824 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A Chicago graduate student studies urban legends for her thesis. She investigates the story of a ghost called the Candyman, a murdered artist who appears when his name is said five times in a mirror.

tensecreepybroodingatmosphericunsettlingslow-burnbleakominous

What happens

Candyman is a 1992 American supernatural horror film written and directed by Bernard Rose and starring Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd, Xander Berkeley, Kasi Lemmons, and Vanessa E. Williams. Based on Clive Barker's short story "The Forbidden", the film follows a Chicago graduate student completing a thesis on urban legends and folklore, which leads her to the legend of the "Candyman", the hook-handed ghost of an African-American artist and son of a slave who was murdered in the late 19th century for his relationship with the daughter of a wealthy white man, and who now appears whenever his name is chanted 5 times in front of the mirror. The film came to fruition after a chance meeting between Rose and Barker who later completed his own film adaptation of Nightbreed (1990). Rose expressed interest in Barker's story "The Forbidden", and Barker agreed to license the rights. Where Barker's story revolved around the themes of the British class system in contemporary Liverpool, Rose chose to refit the story to Cabrini-Green's public housing development in Chicago and instead focus on the themes of race and social class in the inner-city United States. Candyman premiered at the 1992 Toronto International Film Festival, and was theatrically released on October 16, 1992, by TriStar Pictures. It received generally positive reviews and grossed over $25 million in the US, where it was also regarded in some critical circles as a contemporary classic of horror cinema. It was followed by three sequels: Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (1995), Candyman 3: Day of the Dead (1999), and Candyman (2021), which serves as a direct sequel to the original. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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