Five Years Ago, An MCU Director Rebooted One of Horror’s Best Monsters With Some Surprising Twists

Five years ago, a future Marvel Cinematic Universe director created a new chapter in the legacy of one of horror’s greatest monsters. In 1992, Candyman hit theaters after the slasher movie genre was slowly dying out, but it ended up as a success story thanks to Tony Todd’s performance as Candyman and the story’s much deeper tragic mythos that made the monster more than just a mindless killing machine. Candyman was a movie steeped in racial tension and overt racism, and its villain was someone who had a true grudge to carry. It was also a deeply personal film when it came to the urban landscape, almost being a character in and of itself. That made it an easy project for Jordan Peele to attach himself to, and he sought out a director who could bring an authentic view to the storyline.

On August 27, 2021, Nia DaCosta’s sequel to Candyman hit theaters and added a surprising new layer to the mythos of the horror monster almost three decades after his first appearance.

Nia DaCosta Brought the World a New Version of Candyman

Candyman was about a man named Daniel Robitaille from the late 1800s, the son of an enslaved man who grew up to become a renowned painter. When he fell in love with a white woman and impregnated her, the woman’s father put together a lynch mob, cut off his right hand, smeared him with honeycomb, and set bees on him, which stung him to death. Now, in the modern day, anyone who looks in a mirror and says “Candyman” five times summons the vengeful spirit of Candyman, who then kills them. The movie also had a woman named Helen, who might be the reincarnation of Daniel’s lover, and who sacrificed herself to save a young baby and become the new Candyman herself.

When DaCosta signed on and made the 2021 version of Candyman, based on a script by Peele, DaCosta, and Win Rosenfeld, she brought back the events from the earlier movie and presented her version as a sequel. In this movie, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Wonder Man) plays Anthony, the baby that Helen saved in the first movie, now all grown up. This is not revealed until later in the movie, but it is an important plot point, especially when an adult Anthony is told the story of Helen and her rumored killing spree, having no idea she sacrificed herself to save him so many years before. The rest of the movie sees Anthony slowly begin to accept his fate as a new Candyman.

The film’s biggest draw is that it investigates the effects of police violence and brutality on society, and when the police end up being the ones who finally turn Anthony into Candyman, his rampage is glorious and much deserved. However, this is where DaCosta, Peele, and Rosenfeld turn the franchise on its head. This movie shows that Candyman is not just Daniel Robitaille. Instead, it is a collective hive mind of multiple Black individuals who were lynched or murdered due to systemic racism.

Instead of just Daniel, there is a long line of brutalized Black individuals whose spirits all merge into a being of shared pain. This 2021 release introduced other individuals who become Candyman, including an innocent man named Sherman Fields (Michael Hargrove), who was beaten to death by the police. The hive included names like Anthony Crawford, George Stinney, James Byrd Jr., and even Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen). Candyman is the personification of the legacy of racial violence, and this movie spreads the legend to the world.

Nia DaCosta Followed Up with an Underrated MCU Release

DaCosta received critical praise for Candyman, and it allowed her to move on two years later to the MCU, where she had a chance to direct The Marvels. Just as Marvel chose a predominantly Black cast and crew for Black Panther and a predominantly Asian cast and crew for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, the studio brought in a woman director to show the bond and friendship between three strong female superheroes. Sadly, the movie faced an uphill battle thanks to review bombing, and The Marvels ended up as a flop.

Despite that, The Marvels is much better than the reviews and the Rotten Tomatoes score indicate. The greatness in this MCU movie was a shared experience between DaCosta and her cast, which included Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris (who also starred in Candyman), and Iman Vellani as the breakout star, Kamala Khan. This all started thanks to her success on Candyman, which remains known today as the home for three future MCU stars, with director DaCosta, actor Abdul-Mateen II, and actress Parris, all of whom proved in their Marvel releases that they are more ready for Hollywood success.