A remake of the 92 version of the horror film, Candyman was written and produced by Jordan Peele, directed by a young African-American woman, Nia DaCosta, and took the route of combining horror and racial issues.

Humming “Candyman! Candy Man!” The horror ditty, with the MGM and Universal logos written upside down, was actually a bit creative, except then it became clear that the once-glorious MGM company was doing poorly with this and was eventually bought out by a major corporation. Of course, I will admit that there is something to be said for the exquisite imagery of The Candyman.

There are niggers coming out of the walls to commit murder, and the police downstairs panic, leading to the inventive prologue credits: an empty shot of downtown Chicago, a smoky, gloomy sky, a reversed elevated shot that shows the racial and class divide, and a great combination of camera work and music that gives you a creepy sense of the tall buildings towering over you!

It tells the story of a boy, William Burke, who goes to the laundry in ’74 and encounters a kindly candy man, Sherman Fields, with an iron hook arm, coming out of a broken hole in the wall to deliver candy. The kid ends up running scared and the police who come on the scene beat him to death. After his death, more razor blades appeared in the candy and whoever called out to the mirror several times to the candy man came out to do the deed!

And in another meme, how cruel was it that Daniel, a painter who used to paint portraits of rich white men back in the day, who fell in love with their white daughters, was covered in honey for the white man to sting him with bees, and had his hands cut off, pressed into iron hooks and burned to death? The paper cut-outs are also presented to great effect, with the feel of grandparents telling scary ghost stories to children!

The director has a knack for using grim-faced paintings and mirrored reflections to present the murder scenes from different angles, and the camera work and composition are very original.

The white cops kill all sorts of innocent black people in retaliation, instead of relying on serial killers and ghosts to keep the suspense going, and Jordan Peele’s team make a stuffy running gag that froze to the current stage of Hollywood political correctness. There is not enough conflict between the various character appearances, the killings and the detection, and the slow, plodding pace adds to the lethargy.

Candy Man is not alone, it’s a hive of bees and the embodiment of all the black people who have been killed by racism, so the scars on the black male protagonist symbolise the darkness, and the bees surrounding Candy Man are disgusting, so I advise people with intense phobias not to watch.

The police are killed in seconds by the Candyman and the film ends, essentially as an expression of racist anger. But the Candy Man himself is a vehicle for gore and violence, and to kill innocent white people with violence like that, even if the gore is big enough, is still a trifle disgusting and shows the perfunctory nature of the writing and directing!

The indiscriminate killing of innocent black people by white police officers has been going on since the beginning of time, and all the black people killed are the poor underclass, which eventually leads to the slaughter of white people by the evil Candy Man in retaliation, resulting in the tragic situation of bloodshed.