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Candyman is a 2021 American-Canadian supernatural slasher film directed by Nia DaCosta and written by Jordan Peele, Win Rosenfeld and DaCosta. It is a direct sequel to the 1992 film of the same name and the fourth film in the Candyman franchise.

Plot[]

In 1977, at the Cabrini-Green housing projects in Chicago, the police search for Sherman Fields, a homeless man with a hook for a hand known for giving candies to local children. He was suspected of putting a razor blade in a piece of candy that ended up in the hands of a white girl around Halloween. Later on, a young boy is approached by Fields while doing the laundry in an apartment building. Scared by his presence, the kid screams, causing the police to come down and beat Fields to death. Two weeks later, Sherman is posthumously declared innocent after more reports of razor blades in candy.

In 2019, visual artist Anthony McCoy lives in Chicago with his girlfriend, art gallery director Brianna Cartwright. Looking for a creative spark, Anthony goes to Cabrini–Green projects after hearing the urban legend of Helen Lyle by Brianna's brother, Troy. Troy claims Helen kidnapped a baby and went on a killing spree before immolating herself. Anthony meets laundromat owner William Burke, who introduces him to the story of the Candyman, and reveals he was the young boy who witnessed Sherman Fields being beaten to death by the policemen. Burke implies that if somebody says "Candyman" five times to a mirror, Sherman's spirit will appear and kill the summoner. Later that night, Anthony summons Candyman over Brianna's objections.

Inspired by what Burke has told him, Anthony makes an elaborate art piece based on the Candyman legend titled “Say My Name” to display at Brianna's and her co-worker Clive Privler's art exhibit. However, the piece is mostly ignored by the public and disparaged by art critic Finley Stephens, enraging Anthony who drunkenly storms off from the exhibit. Later that night, Clive and his girlfriend Jerrica are brutally murdered by the Candyman, who was summoned by the latter, all the while Anthony starts compulsively painting gruesome portraits of unknown people.

Anthony becomes more obsessed with the Candyman, much to Brianna's chagrin who is reminded of her own father, an obsessive artist who committed suicide when she was a child. After Anthony has two encounters with Sherman's ghost while investigating Helen Lyle's Candyman research, and learns that Finley was murdered after summoning the Candyman at Anthony's behest when he visited her, he confronts Burke and learns that the legend originated in the 1890s with Daniel Robitaille, an artist who was mutilated and lynched for having an interracial affair with his client's daughter, and since then, the legend has been renewed for generations with the souls of other murdered black men, becoming part of the Candyman "hive", and who are also the subjects of Anthony's paintings.

As the legend continues spreading, a group of teenage school girls at a local high school summon the Candyman in the bathroom and are subsequently killed. Anthony begins to undergo a physical transformation, stemming from a bee sting he received on his hand before meeting Burke, which starts spreading across his entire body. He goes to a hospital where he learns that his mother Anne-Marie lied about where he was born and when he confronts her, she reluctantly reveals that he was the baby rescued from the bonfire the night Helen died. She explains that Candyman had been responsible for the spree Helen was blamed for, and had planned to sacrifice him as well to perpetuate the legend. The community had vowed never to repeat the Candyman's legend after that night. Anthony leaves resigned to his fate after realizing he broke the vow and wanders through the Cabrini-Green row houses.

Worried about Anthony, Brianna goes to Burke's laundromat at Cabrini-Green, where she is kidnapped by him and takes her to an abandoned church where Anthony is in a fugue state. Burke reveals that he not only witnessed Sherman's death, but his spirit returned as the Candyman, who killed his older sister and her friend after being summoned. Burke wishes to resurrect the Candyman “hive” as a means of combatting the gentrification that had become rampant in Caprini-Green since Candyman’s defeat and disappearance at the end of the original film. To meet this end, Burke plans to have Anthony wrongfully gunned down at the hands of the police in such a way so that yet another vengeful spirit may join the “hive” and empower/revive the myth of Candyman. He then saws off Anthony's hand and replaces it with a hook to complete his transformation, before chasing Brianna into the rowhouses where she kills him with a pen. Anthony appears and collapses in her arms, as police arrive. They shoot Anthony dead.

As the police detain and attempt to intimidate Brianna into agreeing that Anthony provoked them, she summons Candyman through a rear-view mirror, who appears in Anthony's guise and massacres the police. Anthony is shown in a gated alley killing the last-surviving corrupt cop and approaches Brianna with a mass of bees swarming his upper torso. His face transforms into that of Daniel Robitaille, the Candyman “hive” having now been fully resurrected, and gives Brianna one simple instruction: to "Tell everyone" about what she had just witnessed.

The film’s end credits include a shadow puppet animated montage of various members of the growing Candyman Hive; such as Daniel, Sherman, Anthony Crawford, James Byrd Jr., George Stinney and lastly Anthony himself.

Cast[]

External links[]

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