YMMV / Candyman

• Adaptation Displacement: Few people are even aware of the original short story.
• Awesome Moments: Helen defeating Candyman by stabbing him in what's left of his stomach in the bonfire he arranged for them both.
  • The way Helen posthumously gets back at Trevor and his spineless mistress for their infidelity. Trevor is moping for Helen in the bathroom and says her name in the mirror while his mistress begrudgingly chops up meat for dinner. As he chants her name one final time, Helen appears behind him as a vengeful ghost and splits him from groin to gullet. Meanwhile, the mistress has accidentally cut herself on the knife before she hears Trevor's cries. She goes to the bathroom to discover his massacred corpse, screaming in horror. Between her dead lover and her blood on the knife, good luck explaining this.
• Awesome Music: Philip Glass's ultra-gothic minimalist score, all wordless choirs and pulsing pipe organ, elevates the film from slasher flick to grand tragedy.
  • Helen's Theme, which plays over the end credits and is a recurring leitmotif for her, is particularly haunting with a lonesome piano score eventually being joined by a gothic choir.
• Broken Base: A mix because the three original films (ie. those made in the 90s) all kind of go about it differently. To the point the different styles have different qualities to different people.
• Evil Is Cool: The Candyman himself with his Badass Longcoat and hook. His deep voice and charismatic demeanor provided by Tony Todd also helps.
• Faux Symbolism: Candyman explores the concept of religion, specifically the idea that Man created God. When a local gang is exposed committing crimes and violence as "The Candyman", the being in question ends up actually showing up to reinforce the community's belief in him through Human Sacrifice. The Candyman's lair resembles a decaying, moulded church and he sleeps on a concrete bed reminiscent of an altar. It overlaps with Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter, given that stupid people keep activating the summoning ritual in an effort to prove Candyman doesn't exist. It doesn't end well.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: In the film, Candyman wears a large, fur-laden longcoat which some critics derisively compared to a Blaxploitation character.
• Heartwarming Moments: In the climax, Helen saves the baby Candyman kidnapped and is posthumously cleared of all the crimes he framed her for. The witnesses all come to her funeral in droves. They even make a new painting of her in her honor.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The film's underlying racial themes are, if anything, even more relevant today than they were back in the time of its release. Helen being released from jail after attacking Anne-Marie while a mob of reporters and angry onlookers surround the police station looks strikingly similar to many cases of white police brutality towards black civilians in The New '10s and The New '20s (which the 2021 film would address too).
    Helen: Yeah, but you know what bugs me? Two people get murdered. The cops do nothing. A white woman gets attacked, and they lock the place down.
  • Helen's Heroic Sacrifice at the end of this film to save Anthony would ultimately proven avail them naught as a Senseless Sacrifice for her as in the 2021 film, Anthony would still die and become another Candyman.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The boyfriend of the woman in the opening is played by Ted Raimi, and he knows better than to summon a dangerous, murderous supernatural force, stopping just before saying Candyman's name the fifth time. His girlfriend proceeds to finish it and she is brutally murdered for it by the conjured force. The boyfriend was said to have survived but gone crazy and his hair turned light as a result. It would certainly explain why Chet is so loopy and an alcoholic in Ash vs. Evil Dead. And having a demon summoning buddy like Ash Williams who is also believed to be crazy from his brush with the supernatural force that killed his own girlfriend, it is of no wonder he was smart enough not to go through with summoning the Candyman.
• Magnificent Bastard: The Candyman himself, born Daniel Robitaille, was tortured and murdered by racist whites. His anguished spirit survives as a murderous urban legend within the whispers and imaginations of Cabrini-Green, forcing him to kill to stay alive. The Candyman kills those who summon him to spread the fear of his myth, but when the heroine Helen begins to debunk the myth, he is compelled to appear to her. Framing Helen for murder and the disappearance of a child, the Candyman systematically lures her to him, intending on consuming much of Cabrini-Green in a fire while enshrining Helen as his beloved victim to enhance his myth even further, handling himself with an unmistakable cunning and pure charisma to go along with his dark conviction.
• Narm:
  • Candyman, after killing the asylum doctor, exiting backwards through a window (which was achieved by pulling him via visible wires). There's also Helen taking this opportunity to walk along the outcropping outside, signal a nurse to let her in, and promptly knock her out to steal her outfit.
  • Some viewers have found Candyman's appearance to be ridiculous. Gene Siskel compared his clothing to a blaxploitation pimp's outfit.
  • Trevor's pose and the expression on his face after Candywoman!Helen kills him.
  • "We hear you're lookin' for Candyman, bitch."
• Nausea Fuel: The toilet stall where a recent murder took place. Covered in rotting blood and the toilet is absolutely crawling with flies. Urp...
  • The restroom itself, which is extremely dilapidated and has messages written on the walls with what strongly looks like fecal matter.
• Poor Man's Substitute: Due to the comparisons stated below, the first film's director can be considered this to Stanley Kubrick of The Shining fame.
• Sequelitis: Depends on how much you liked the first film, but the others pretty much abandon the metaphysical observations on the power of urban myth from the original.
• Spiritual Adaptation: The first film evokes the surreal atmosphere of a Stanley Kubrick horror film such as The Shining with elements of David Lynch. What further helps is that the music by Philip Glass can be considered to be reminiscent of Wendy Carlos's electronically musical work (Carlos had worked with Kubrick on films The Shining and A Clockwork Orange).
• Values Resonance: The themes of racial injustice, with Candyman being the victim of racial prejudice and the residents of Cabrini-Green living in poverty while being ignored and discriminated by the police and broader society, still feel very relevant to a modern audience as anti-black racism has only become more of a hot-button issue since the movie came out.
• The Woobie: Helen Lyle, upon being turned into a Wrongly Accused Hero with Bad Publicity and her husband dumping her upon her conviction.

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