Maybe it’s just trepidation about what happens with remakes and reboots, but seeing the Candyman remade seems almost sacrilegious from a horror standpoint. In case you hadn’t heard, Joseph Baxter from Den of Geek! has stated that Jordan Peele, who is supposedly taking the lead in bringing the villainous specter back to life, has tapped Yahya Abdul-Mateen II to play the dreaded, hook-handed baddie. If you’re wondering who Yahya is then just know he was the younger Black Manta in the recent Aquaman movie, though he’s been featured in other movies as well, so he is a known actor. Jordan Peele has already shown with Get Out and Us that he’s fully capable of making a very cerebral type of horror and can possibly get his hands a bit dirty, but this is Candyman.
The hook-handed horror wasn’t really about playing mind games. He didn’t taunt his victims endlessly or allow that much tension to build up. In fact there are only a couple of people he did this with in the first and second films, and he would have killed them as well had they not meant something to him. There’s no doubting that Peele is a great director as he’s proven it more than once, but when it comes to blood soaking the ground and bodies hitting the floor, you know, in true Candyman fashion, it’s going to be interesting to see what happens. Peele can tell a great story and Candyman is just, a great story, but it’s also one that’s been told and probably should be left alone. This is perhaps one of the biggest failings of Hollywood these days, though it’s a practice that can’t really be stopped since everyone believes they could do something better, something different, and something that people will thoroughly enjoy. It’s not the intent to really push the original back and claim dominance as many would say, but instead to update it and bring it back into focus so that current and future generations can enjoy it.
That’s a noble goal and all, but the track record of remakes is simply not that great at this time. It could be that Peele will nail it out of the park and create a horror movie that will rival all of them in some way. But even in his prime Candyman was a middling horror story, something that was utterly terrifying but still wasn’t spoken of in the same manner of other horror monsters. Anyone not wiling to admit this just needs to look at the box office numbers in order to be certain that while Candyman, a definite cult classic, is one of the many movies that a lot of us remember being scared to death by back in the day, he’s no Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Meyers, or even Chucky. For some reason his legend never took hold quite as firmly as the others, be it due to marketing or something else. He’s been a terrifying image throughout the years and Tony Todd was the ultimate Candyman, as no one at this time can possibly come close to how sinister and terrifying he can be. It’s been said by Josh Millican of Dread Central that Tony will in fact be making an appearance in the remake, but it’s not sure just yet where he’ll show up or what character he’ll be playing.
Quite honestly not allowing Tony to take up his role once again does make sense, as he’s aged quite a bit since he put on the hook and outfit. But the voice, the menacing presence, and the fact that he sounds just as terrifying in other movies that aren’t horror-related is something that’s hard to deny. He’s THE Candyman to a lot of people, and replacing him, despite the fact that it’s a sensible move, seems almost as though Peele might be stripping the core content from the movie. It’s not like that obviously, but the idea that anyone would try to remake this movie is enough to get the hackles up on a lot of people. Remakes are honestly like a poke to the ribs at times, a jab by those that want to tell us that they can do better, that what we idolize might have been well and good back in its time, but now there’s something that they can do with it that will make it that much better. Melody Weckel of Odyssey makes a good argument that sometimes remakes and reboots are unnecessary because they seem to deviate from the original on which they’re based, though this is not a universal belief or practice. It’s necessary to look objectively at remakes since there’s a chance they could be better than the original, but it’s easy to be pensive since we don’t want to see the classics we grew up with being dismantled or in any way disrespected.
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