The Daily Stream becomes the Daily Scream for spooky season!
Delve deep into humanity’s dark side in a strikingly original way with 2021’s Candyman. Coscreenwriter and director Nia DaCosta follows on from the very good 1992 film of the same name with a spiritual sequel that fully centers Black characters and Black stories in a way that the original film only danced around. Now, Teyonah Parris artist’s agent and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s painter, a well-off Black couple in gentrified Chicago, come under the spell of the Candyman, a figure from urban legend and Black American history.
What’s scary here is not blood and guts, not monsters jumping out at us, but the very real horror of the hatred that is baked into our society, a hatred that is always lurking in the shadows and all too often rears its hideous face. DaCosta has some sharp ideas, too, about what our scary stories reveal about our collective cultural fears, both conscious and unconscious. (Read my 2021 review.)
US: stream on Prime and MGM+ (via Prime); rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
UK: stream on BBC iPlayer (through November 6th); rent on Prime; rent/buy on Apple TV
See Candyman at Letterboxd for more viewing options.
