CANDYMAN
Watchable. The original movie was made in 1992 with white student Helen as the protagonist. Jordan Peele's written the story differently. It's Cabrini Green again, nowadays. The protagonist is a black artist, just like the legendary killer. We also get a scene of summoning Candyman to have someone murdered. Helen is mentioned as if implying her having gone mad under Candyman's influence and perpetrating the murders herself which I find already unfair to the white woman's character. In the remake the backstory is told with an 'artsy' shadow theatre but that obscures the yarn. And the baby story's too literal. The most important and profound change to the tale is that this time the lead protagonist sees himself as Candyman in a mirror and his brush, aimed at social issues, becomes a hook. While the blame for social problems like ghettos is pointed at "you-artists" and being one is teasingly ridiculed in the artwork named "Say My Name", violence seems to be justified in the film. At some point the legendary murderer levitates like a saint. What's going to come next? Saint Candyman sanctifying revenge bloodshed?! What I did like in this version, were reverted high-rise buildings in the fog, Philip Glass' "Music Box" in the soundtrack and, to a point, the critic's necklace with a tape in it which looked like the candy with a razor blade found in the elevator a few minutes earlier. Yet remembering the tension and images of the original, here forsaken for social moralizing, I have to say the law of remakes has worked and it's simple - don't make them.
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