Nia DaCosta and Jordan Peele imbue the horror cult classic with political dimensions that are poignant and darkly comic by turns.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 23, 2024

Viewers of the new Candyman movie get overblown discourse instead of genuine horror.

| Dec 17, 2021

Instead of projecting the monster onto an outside other, that gaze is directed inward and outward simultaneously... Fear of the monster is fear of one's own tail, one's own reflection.

| Oct 20, 2021

With its shadow puppetry, sophisticated reclamation of the Candyman legend and slick, confident filmmaking, even for those not thrilled by the idea of horror cinema more generally, it is hard to deny that Candyman is a massive and exciting step forward

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 8, 2021

It's in the "Get Out" level category of relevant horror.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 4, 2021

Acute and skillfully made, "Candyman" is also pointedly political.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 3, 2021

It's magnificent.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 1, 2021

DaCosta pulls together a series of impressive set pieces, all built around Candyman's appearance in mirrors, and most especially a grisly bathroom mass murder that manages to be both grotesquely bloody and free of violence.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 1, 2021

You should feel something. That the overwhelming sensation provoked by Nia DaCosta's Candyman is numbness, then, is a problem.

| Aug 30, 2021

[A] smart, stylish "spiritual sequel"...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 29, 2021

This is not as good as the original film... If you're more than 30-years-old and remember the original, go ahead and give this a shot. But it's really not the same.

| Aug 28, 2021

Just as the 1992 version began with a slow crawl along the highway, the 2021 version follows the path of the el tracks, then flips, traveling skyward and westward through downtown in a stunning, upside-down shot...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 27, 2021

Everyone's allowed to have one bad one thing, and for Nia DaCosta and Jordan Peele, Candyman 2021 is it.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 27, 2021

The movie falls right into its own traps where the original toed a curious line; it overreaches, most prominently for relevance, to the point of raising questions about whether the movie understands its own, initially provocative, questions.

| Aug 27, 2021

DaCosta uses precise camerawork and clever, subtle mirror shots to suggest...that it's seductive but dangerous to name the worst of anybody's traumas anywhere, but especially in the vicinity of a mirror.

| Aug 27, 2021

Candyman is a work held together by thoughtful choices, and it has a lot to say.

| Aug 27, 2021

The camera is always aware of threats in peripheral vision. Timing is spot-on throughout.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 27, 2021

The scares are off the charts, but only as a means to confront the film's heavy messaging about racial injustice. Dynamite star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and director Nia DaCosta make you think hard about everything you see. Welcome to a new horror classic.

| Aug 27, 2021

A standout splatterfest that's simultaneously silly, frightening and simmering with rage at the festering wound of US racial injustice.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 27, 2021

The kernels of complex ideas regarding race, class and gender are too often thrown out at us without consideration for their full breadth and form.

| Aug 27, 2021