Candyman

2.5/4

Rated R for Violence and Gore

Starring: Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd, Xander Berkley, Kasi Lemmons

“Candyman” is a modern day Gothic horror tale.  It follows the formula of your average slasher movie, but it fills the void with ideas.  Unfortunately, it’s success is limited.

Graduate student Helen Lyle (Madsen) is a graduate student working on her thesis with her friend, Bernadette (Lemmons).  She is under the impression that people create mythical villains as a coping mechanism from the horrors of daily life. To prove this, she investigates the death of a woman in the Cabrini-Green projects who was rumored to be murdered by the mythical Candyman (Tony Todd).  She gets more than she bargained for when she realizes that Candyman is real, and he has special plans for her.

For a while, “Candyman” is an effective chiller.  It’s atmospheric and deliberately paced by writer/director Bernard Rose (who based the film off a story by horrormeister Clive Barker).  The trouble stars when Candyman enters the picture.  Rose fails to do what every horror movie must do in order for it to be successful: establish a set of rules about what Candyman can or cannot do and follow them.  There is a connection between Helen and Candyman, but it opens a question that it doesn’t answer until the very end: why is Candyman so interested in her?  And since this is the backbone of the story, it’s a big problem, and I kept thinking that I missed something.

There are some good qualites about this movie.  The film is unique to say the least.  It borrows from the slasher movie and the monster movie and mixes them together without being derivative.  The performances are also strong.  Virginia Madsen, who went on to be nominated for an Oscar for her performance in “Sideways,” is effective as the nice girl heroine who gets in over her head.  She’s smart, but she’s curious, and in this movie, it’s a deadly combination. Actress turned filmmaker Kasi Lemmons is also good as Helen’s bubbly bestie Bernie, channeling the same personality she used in “The Silence of the Lambs.”  Xander Berkley plays a slimeball, something that he is uncannily good at.  And then there’s the title player, Tony Todd, who uses his soft, deep voice to great effect.  He also makes great use of his tall body to add even more creepiness.

With a few rewrites, this could have been a great movie.  The story is compelling (some of which is purely Hitchcockian), the acting is good, and unlike many horror movies, it shows restraint.  There’s not a lot of violence in this movie, and the body count is surprisingly low (the gore factor, however, is very high).  It is a creepy movie, but it doesn’t quite come together.

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