Candyman Review

Written by: Ash's missing hand   

At the beginning of Bernard Rose's Candyman, based on a Clive Barker story, we hear an urban legend about a woman in a high-rise public housing project, who calls 911 but is not taken seriously. Not long after the call, her body is found slashed to death. Has the Candyman struck again?

Who is the Candyman? In the movie, he is a powerful supernatural being who haunts Cabrini Green, the name of the housing project in Chicago. His lair is an abandoned apartment on one of the upper floors of the building. All of this is written down by two researchers from the University of Illinois (Virginia Madsen & Kasi Lemmons) as part of a research project.

Madsen is caught in an unhappy marriage and throws herself into her work, bringing along Anne McCoy (Vanessa Williams) as they interview neighbors of the Candyman's latest victim. Their stories begin to seem to support the legend, even though urban legends are just theory, right?

The two women walk up and down stairwells and crawl through empty apartments looking for the monster. Empty apartments of the upper floors of the building are occupied by gangs and poses a real threat to the women, at the same time they are searching for what they believe is an imaginary one.

The plot thickens as the line between what is real and myth become intertwined. This movie had a Hitchcock feel to it. Instead of simply scaring with gore, this movie has strong story ideas and combined with gore makes this an excellent horror movie.