Film

Candyman

Name: Candyman
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Released: 2021
Cast: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Kyle Kaminsky

Other titles called Candyman: the 1992 film.

Horror
Fantasy
Very dark

A Chicago artist ventures into the myth of Candyman and pays the price. Nia DaCosta's 2021 film is a haunted-house story that builds its terror around race, gentrification, and inherited trauma. It's gorgeous and angry and unsettling in ways that stick with you. For anyone who wants their scares served with a side of something to think about.

TMDb rating

3.0

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like horror that works as a sharp, political essay on gentrification and how stories about a place get weaponised, with gorgeous, deliberately jagged visual craft and a strong sense of style over jump scares.

Skip it if you want a clean, scare-led ride; this one is talky in stretches, leans on arty fragmentation and gruesome set pieces, and its ideas often land harder than its frights do.

What it asks of you: Ninety-one minutes of mostly uneasy, slow-building dread, with sudden bursts of violence, so it needs your attention on images and subtext as much as on the plot.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Get Out2017

Jordan Peele's breakthrough does what Candyman does: uses genre language to talk about race and power without turning it into a sermon. Brilliant, propulsive, and genuinely frightening.

But If you've seen it, you know where it goes. The twist doesn't hit twice.

The Invisible Man2020

Leigh Whannell's remake is a paranoia thriller about a woman hunted by something she can't see. Like Candyman, it's formally inventive and uses genre as a vehicle for real social rage.

But Spends more time on dread than jump scares. Some will find it slow-burning when they want immediate shocks.

Antebellum2020

A Black woman's world fractures in ways that are visually stunning and conceptually devastating. It shares Candyman's interest in how trauma haunts the present and how spectacle can obscure truth.

But The film's core twist is divisive. Some feel it undermines rather than deepens what came before.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Candyman

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Dead Don't Die2019

Both films use an American monster (Candyman, the living dead) to talk about what America has built and what it denies. Both are uninterested in scaring you into comfort.

Jim Jarmusch's zombie film is a slow, deadpan allegory about climate change and American malaise. It's funny and sad and refuses to perform genre correctly—precisely what makes it strange and worth your attention.

But It moves at a funeral pace and doesn't deliver the catharsis genre usually promises. If you want zombies to be scary, this will disappoint.

Us2019

Jordan Peele's second film is wilder and weirder than Get Out, rooted in doppelgängers and class anxiety. It's imaginative horror that trusts the audience to sit with unsettling ideas.

But More ambitious than disciplined. The plot strains under the weight of what Peele is trying to say.

The Wailing2016

Na Hong-jin's Korean horror masterpiece layers mystery, folk dread, and theological doubt. Like Candyman, it's obsessed with how belief itself becomes a curse, and it builds to something genuinely transcendent.

But It's 156 minutes and deliberately withholding. Patience is not optional, and ambiguity might frustrate rather than fascinate you.

Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh1995

The original 1992 Candyman is an obvious choice, but this sequel leans further into mythology and atmosphere. It's uneven, but it has moments of real creepiness and understands what makes the legend work.

But It's objectively the weaker film. The mythology gets muddier and the scares less inventive.

The Purge2013

James DeMonaco's premise—a government-sanctioned night of violence—is a genre skeleton for talking about class and control. It's unpretentious about what it is: lean, angry, functional thriller.

But It prioritizes concept over character. The people in peril feel less real than the idea animating them.

Night of the Living Dead1968

George Romero's foundational zombie film is as much about race and America as it is about the undead. The black and white is claustrophobic; the horror feels documentary-real. Essential watching.

But The pacing is deliberate almost to the point of glacial. Modern viewers can find it stagey, even though that's precisely where its power lives.

Swallow2020

Carlo Mirabella-Davis's body-horror film about a woman swallowing inedible objects is hypnotic and disturbing. It's formal experimentation in service of real psychological unease—controlled, weird, and completely committed to its vision.

But It's arthouse horror with a patience most will read as slow. The subject matter itself (pica, marital claustrophobia) may feel too narrow or too unpleasant.

Mulholland Drive2001

Both films are about beautiful surfaces (art, myth, cinema itself) concealing violence. Both ask what we're willing to ignore to maintain the illusion.

Nacho Vigalondo's meta-nightmare about Los Angeles and identity is formally dazzling, psychologically cruel, and absolutely hypnotic. It's a film about surfaces fracturing to reveal something darker underneath—obsessed with spectacle and the price of visibility.

But It's notoriously difficult. The narrative structure is fractured by design; if you need clarity, this will infuriate you.

Come True2020

Like Candyman, it's interested in bodies as sites of transaction and violation. Both films are beautiful in ways that make the horror more disturbing, not less.

Escaflowne's A. KA Alice Englert's quietly devastating science-fiction film about a runaway in a sleep-study is visually gorgeous, synth-soaked, and conceptually chilling. It's about what people will sell—safety, identity, body—and for how little.

But It's glacially paced and ends ambiguously. The horror is psychological and cumulative; there are no scares, only dread.