20 Socially Conscious Horror Movies
By Jenn Reid
Candyman (1992)
The Issue: Racism, from slavery to the modern benevolent racism
The Movie:
A graduate student named Helen (Virginia Madsen) is researching urban legends and discovers a local Chicago legend about a man called the Candyman. You summon him by saying his name five times in a mirror and he appears, killing the summoner with his hook for a hand. Helen discovers the stories of 25 people in a housing complex who have been killed that way. The story of Candyman is that he was the son of a slave who fell in love with a white woman. After they had a child, the woman’s father sent a mob after him who cut off his hand, gave him a hook, smothered him in honey and let him be stung to death by bees.
Helen attempts to summon the Candyman and, when nothing happens, decides it’s just a myth people created to cope with the deaths in the housing complex. She continues to research and is attacked by a local gang member who has taken on the ‘Candyman’ persona for street cred. She calls the police, who then arrest this ‘Candyman’ for all the murders. Helen assures everyone the Candyman isn’t real.
Naturally, the Candyman is real. He shows up and tells Helen he needs to start killing again to make up for her telling everyone he wasn’t real. Helen blacks out and wakes up in an apartment inside the housing complex, where there is a dead dog, a missing baby and a very angry resident. She attacks Helen and Helen is arrested. The Candyman appears again and attacks Helen, cutting her neck. Helen is taken to the hospital where the Candyman shows up again and kills her friend. She’s blamed for the murder and sent to a psychiatric hospital where the Candyman shows up again (surprise!) and kills the doctor.
Helen then goes to the Candyman’s lair to try and find the missing baby. Instead, she sees portraits of the Candyman’s lynching and his lost love, whom Helen strongly resembles. The Candyman wants to set fire to the building but Helen manages to save the baby. She and the Candyman both die in the fire. Later, Helen’s fiancé tries saying her name in the mirror to resurrect her, and she comes back and kills him with Candyman’s hook.
What It’s Saying:
People through the phrase “cult classic” and “cult film” around a lot, but this one is definitely an underrated favorite amongst horror fans. It has a lot to say about the ways poor people in Chicago are forced to live and how many white, liberal progressives (like Helen early in the film) are all too willing to study the problems in America without doing anything to help or solve them.