With his big fur coat, giant hook hand, and bee-stung body, Candyman is a very cool character, played by Tony Todd, a very cool actor. Unfortunately, he's only in this movie for about twelve minutes. The rest of the time is spent with an uninteresting grad student who is doing research on urban legends (horror movies have taught me that there's always a class on urban legends at every college). She unearths the tale of Candyman, which apparently ticks the guy off, because he lives on through word of mouth, and if she demystifies him he'll die- I think. The movie's kind of confusing. At one point the uninteresting grad student talks to an older colleague who also wrote a paper on Candyman, but Candyman seemingly has no interest in killing him- oh, wait, because the uninteresting grad student is a reincarnation of his past love or something. Again, the movie's kind of confusing. Not very scary, either- although the part where Candyman slices off a young boy's genitalia and throws them in a toilet goes beyond any John Waters movie in the ugly bad taste department.
This movie has a lot of good ideas, and the art direction is good, but the slow pacing and dull characters really hurt it. Despite a cameo from Ted Raimi, I can't recommend this movie. It's stuff like this that keep Clive Barker from becoming "future of horror".
This movie has a lot of good ideas, and the art direction is good, but the slow pacing and dull characters really hurt it. Despite a cameo from Ted Raimi, I can't recommend this movie. It's stuff like this that keep Clive Barker from becoming "future of horror".