By Jorge Ignacio Castillo

Perhaps the biggest surprise about Nia DaCosta’s Candyman is how respectful is of the 1992 original. While hardly a box office smash, the Tony Todd-Virginia Madsen starrer got decent reviews and reverberated through the years by having more of a social edge than your average slasher. Unlike the likes of Freddy Krueger or Jason Vorhees, Candyman didn’t start a monster, but was turned into one by others.

DaCosta and writer/producer Jordan Peele (Get Out) build on the first Candyman, by focusing on how the violence against the African-American community echoes through time. Injustice creates boogiemen.

The new Candyman opens with a sadly recognizable tableau: a group of policemen try to apprehend a black suspect and end up killing him. The setting is the Cabrini-Green project, the same area that three decades ago witnessed the events of the first film.

Cut to several years later. The social housing area has been gentrified. Anthony (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Aquaman), a visual artist struggling for inspiration, is told about the Candyman legend and decides to makes the ghostly killer his next project. Let’s just say he gets more than he bargained for and there’s no shortage of people willing to repeat the vicious spirit’s name five times in front of a mirror.

The movie is heavy on allegories, chief among them how black pain echoes through generations to become anger. The fact the movie suggests the possibility of multiple versions of the same legend fits the narrative. To a lesser degree, the film is critical of gentrification and harsh on the art scene for commodifying black suffering. There’s enough material here for a couple of movies, alas Candyman clocks 90 minutes sharp, a welcome rarity after so many bloated tentpole films.

Candyman doesn’t forget this is a genre picture (it makes effective use of body horror, pushing the envelope enough to make you squeamish), but there’s something perfunctory about the horror sequences. Ironically, the most disturbing scenes come in the form of shadow puppets, used to contextualize the plight of the Cabrini-Green dwellers. Not something you would like to see as live action. 3/5 stars.

Candyman is now playing in theatres.