Win Rosenfeld

Beyond its success at breathing new life into a decades’ old story, Candyman is a reminder that horror movies don’t have to be formulaic scare machines. Fun though body-count movies can be, more ambitious horror films operate on different levels, delivering the shocks and scares while exploring material that’s disturbing on a different level.

Candyman leverages visual art and the film’s stars to consider the history of racial subjugation, the ongoing trauma of police violence and discrimination, and the way white supremacy continues to be leveraged to benefit white America. It’s when it rises above subtext and action and is telegraphed through conversation that it loses its audience.