Candyman's Fluch

Hmm, with the thunder and the hail outside Candyman was not a very easy movie to watch tonight, there were moments when I actually felt a bit scared… The original and unpredictable plot deserves a lot of praise, I was permanently curious about what would happen next. Some of the jump-scares are also great, likewise with the gore, and the thick atmosphere deserves A+. It’s a really good film on the theme of urban legends, the kind there could be a lot more of, it’s a shame that it’s still an unexploited field. (02.05.2008)

Candyman is a meta-horror movie on the theme of urban legends which itself became an urban legend. As in his stunning debut, the spectral coming-of-age film Paperhouse, director Bernard Rose combines the worlds of reality and fiction by means of an immersive atmosphere. In the interest of interconnecting the two spheres, however, there is no clear boundary between them. Candyman is one of the best horror films of not only the 1990s, because it completely deviates from the usual genre production, which is due to Rose’s supremely conceptual treatment of it. As both director and screenwriter, Rose essentially expands on the original idea of ​​Barker's short story and gives us a view from the outside into fragments of a complex world, which, together with the main heroine, we tensely explore until we suddenly discover that Candyman has absorbed and fully enthralled us. Aided by the interplay of the camera wok, set design and music, the brilliant gradation of the narrative and the stylistically precise suggestion of a warped reality make for a horror movie that, even though it is placed alongside classic butchers of horror such as Freddy Kruger, is much closer to similarly singular and extraordinary phenomena such as Jacob’s Ladder. In comparison to that film, however, Rose’s work is even more stylistically nuanced, particularly in its balancing on the edge of reality and, thanks to that, also more ambivalent, though at the same time it remains more anchored in the genre and more earthy or, better said, more popular, in the good sense of that word. It’s simply an urban legend that we initially laugh at, that we think we can appropriate and analyse, but then we suddenly find that we are afraid to go to the restroom by ourselves and we avoid looking in the mirror. (31.05.2020)

Although not exceptional, this horror movie from the 90s is certainly above average and stands out not for its special effects or set design, but for the bleak atmosphere of a neglected urban periphery, unsettling music, and last but not least, the performances, led by Virginia Madsen. There are some weaker moments in the screenplay, but the technical aspects such as editing, cinematography, and sound are on a solid level. Overall impression: 70%. (07.04.2009)

A fairly literal Nietzschean thesis about staring into the abyss which has the ability to become the story it’s telling. But maybe I'm wrong and you'll say Candyman five times in the mirror after you finish watching it. This film falls woefully into the category of a late 80's slasher, and it has only itself to blame in the moments where it can’t leave off of simply alternating classic jump scares, however much the brutality pushes the film slightly beyond the usual slasher comfort zone. And yet it deserves a much higher status, as it is nothing less than a general description of a myth, its genesis, its universality, our ability to project ourselves into it and, most importantly, its elusiveness due to the untrustworthiness of all its sources. The myth here is something unpleasantly abstract, but that makes it even more unpleasant, while the pain and death are quite tangible. And Candyman is a particularly well-turned myth, because while, like any other, he owes his existence to the people who believe in him, he sweeps away those who mock him by dusting off his reputation again for a few long years. Try to avoid that bulletproof clause. ____ Anyway, if on the night you see Candyman you are awakened by a sound like a knock on the door, you live alone in a small apartment in the middle of the city, you get up to go to the toilet, which a greedy architect designed with your back exactly to the mirror, to which you have to turn around, and when you've done all that, you return to the room where you had automatically hung your coat over the back of a high chair... well, you might as well get ready to meet dawn in person. Or at least that’s what my friend told me... (01.06.2020)