Candyman explicitly becomes a horror story about the power and fascination of horror stories.

| Jun 7, 2022

Wonderfully playing against expectation, Candyman leaves you wondering where the story will go next, something missing in most horror movies.

| Jan 13, 2021

If Candyman doesn't live up to its potential, it does fulfill most of the Saturday night requirements. The action is swift, if excessively graphic, and Madsen proves a strong-willed, sympathetic lead.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 4, 2020

This Candyman can elicit some bona fide shivers while the picture that bears his name is high-caliber horror in its purest, most primal form.

| Feb 26, 2020

To pull it off would take the utmost artistry and imagination, but writer-director Bernard Rose expends his energy mainly on the easier task of churning up violence and gore for its own sake.

| Feb 26, 2020

Candyman offers a plot riddled with narrative ambiguities that are never fully resolved, all as a spur to the hooked viewer to spread their own take on the Candyman myth, and so to keep it alive.

| Oct 29, 2018

Candyman is an uppper-register horror item that delivers the requisite shocks and gore but doesn't cheat or cop out.

| Sep 17, 2008

Like so many post-Val Lewton horror films, this 1992 feature starts out promisingly while the plot is mainly a matter of suggestion, but gradually turns gross and obvious as the meanings become literal and unambiguous.

| Sep 17, 2008

One of the best sustained horror movies for some years.

| Jun 24, 2006

The Candyman is a svelte, sexual monument, far removed from the silent brutality of your average serial slasher.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 3, 2004

The film's spooky atmosphere is accentuated by Anthony B. Richmond's cinematography and Philip Glass's score.

| May 20, 2003

At its heart, Candyman terrifies because of its ideas. It sinks its horrific foundations very much in the real world of poverty and racial alienation.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Director Rose seems not to know what to show next, and whether this is in an effort to keep his audience guessing or not, it only ends up making what could have been an exceptionally disturbing film exceptionally annoying.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Madsen is a much better actress than is usually found in such a role. However, if you don't like splashes of blood or bees swarming out of bodies, you may want to think twice about this one.

| Jan 1, 2000

What I liked was a horror movie that was scaring me with ideas and gore, instead of simply with gore.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 1, 2000