This lackluster sequel forgoes everything that made the original a superior horror film in favor of simplistic genre cliches.
After a confrontation with New Orleans local Ethan Tarrant (William O'Leary), history professor Phillip Purcell (Michael Culkin) is murdered by Candyman (Tony Todd), a deadly spirit about whom Purcell has lectured. Ethan's father fell victim to a similar death, and Ethan is charged with the crime;
his sister, schoolteacher Annie (Kelly Rowan), is unnerved when one of her students, Matthew (Joshua Gibran Mayweather), begins repeatedly drawing Candyman. In order to reassure her kids that Candyman is only a legend, she repeats his name five times into a mirror--the manner, according to legend,
by which he can be summoned. Nothing happens at first, but that night Candyman butchers Annie's husband, Paul (Timothy Carhart), and entices her to join him in his legend.
She refuses, and begins to seek the truth about Candyman's past. From Honore Thibideaux (Matt Clark), an expert on local history, and her own mother, Octavia (Veronica Cartwright), Annie learns that Candyman is the spirit of a slave who was murdered for conducting a forbidden affair with a white
woman; that woman was Annie's great-grandmother. Candyman slaughters Thibideaux, Ethan, and Octavia, and Annie goes to her family's ancestral home in the midst of a torrential storm to seek the mirror that contains Candyman's spirit. She finds it, and the killer appears, again attempting to seduce
her into joining him. But before he can, Matthew and several schoolmates arrive to help her. Annie smashes the glass, destroying Candyman. Four years later, her little daughter looks into a mirror and begins to repeat Candyman's name.
One of the key elements that separated Bernard Rose's original CANDYMAN (1992) from most run-of-the-mill slasher movies was its unique and well-developed mythology (derived from Clive Barker's story "The Forbidden"). That film's Candyman was a being who lived in legend, and appeared in the real
world only to strike down those who would deny his reality and attack the superstitious belief that allowed him to "live." CANDYMAN: FAREWELL TO THE FELSH dispenses with this intriguing idea to make him just another vengeful phantom, haunting the young heroine who, in a tired and predictable plot
twist, turns out to be his descendant. The story on the whole is unsurprising and schematic, making it abundantly easy to guess who will fall victim to Candyman's hook and when.
As opposed to the gutsy, driven researcher played by the first film's Virginia Madsen, Annie is a wan and unremarkable protagonist both as written and as played by Rowan. Although director Bill Condon manages a genuinely exciting climax, his attempts to goose up the movie's first half with an
endless series of cheap false scares make matters worse, provoking more annoyance than suspense. (Some reviewers also criticized his reliance on the sudden appearances by black men, who are mistaken for Candyman, for these jolts.) Philip Glass's music, such an integral element of the original's
ethereal mood, seems out of place backing such schlocky material. (Graphic violence, profanity.) leave a comment
