Mad at: Candyman (2021) 2021-09-20

0:00:10
Unknown_00: So I see this and I think, oh boy, another movie from Jordan Peele.

Unknown_00: Unlike most other angry white people, I don't really hate movies by black people for black people. So it could be good, I didn't mind Get Out, even though it was kind of weird. But then, because it's an adaptation of an old movie, the credits start rolling in the beginning. And I see this title card, and I start thinking, uh-oh.

0:00:48
Unknown_00: Now, don't get me wrong, I like Jordan Peele, and I don't know who Nia Dakota is, except that she's black and a woman, and the only other black woman that I know to direct a movie was the woman who directed Cuties, which I have heard from my friends and associates is a great film, but that Winn Rosenfeld has me nervous, probably because he was the executive producer of Black Klansman, which was terrible, and also gives you an idea of what to expect in this movie. Such as a gay interracial couple. This is our first scene. Literally, from the credits to the first scene, the first thing you see is a gay interracial couple, and it's not even the main character. Thanks, Wynn Rosenfeld. It almost makes me wonder if this was mandatory for Jordan Peele to have this movie made. It's like a deal with the devil. If you want to make a movie in Hollywood about your black issues, you also have to have a gay interracial couple.

0:01:32
Unknown_09: Combat Alley? What's it called now? Cabrini Green?

Unknown_09: It was the project's affordable housing that had a particularly bad reputation.

0:02:06
Unknown_00: So immediately, before anything about the Candyman is established, the movie begins its thesis, which is that white people are bad, and everything white people do is bad. This is not even a joke. This is the entire point of the movie, is that white people are bad. There's actually a twist towards the end of the movie, and the twist is that white people are bad.

Unknown_09: You would never know. Yeah, because they tore down and gentrified the shit out of it.

Unknown_06: Translation, white people built the ghetto, and then erased it when they realized they built the ghetto. Ooh, no offense.

Unknown_02: None taken. They took the opportunity to make it livable. I could've gotten you a better conversion.

Unknown_06: They kept telling people they were gonna make it better, moving them from place to place, but really, they were just tearing it down so they could develop everything around it.

0:02:53
Unknown_02: Oh, like here.

Unknown_02: You guys wanna hear a scary story?

Unknown_00: So the gay black guy who is the sister of the wife of the main character begins his story explaining the origins of the Candyman, or what he believes to be the origins of the Candyman. What's funny about this story is that the point seems to be that a white woman stuck her nose where it didn't belong, and as a result, the Candyman got her.

Unknown_02: This is a story about a woman named Helen Lyle.

0:03:27
Unknown_02: She was a grad student, a white grad student, doing her thesis on the urban legends of Cabrini Green.

Unknown_02: For research, she came down to Cabrini a few times, you know, asking questions, taking pictures of graffiti, people.

Unknown_02: And then, one day, she just... snaps.

Unknown_02: She beheaded a rottweiler. By the time the police show up, she's in one of the apartments doing snow angels in a pool of blood. The authorities take her in, but she escapes almost immediately. She goes on a rampage, leaving a trail of bodies in her wake, and then the baby of one of the residents is abducted. The mother is devastated. Everyone is looking for him, and nothing.

0:04:03
Unknown_02: of the annual bonfire with all of the residents of Cabrini watching, Helen arrives with a sacrificial offering.

Unknown_02: Baby in her arms, she runs towards the fire, but they're on her quick. They say she was in a fugue state, fighting back blindly, but they got the baby free.

Unknown_02: While everyone is fussing over him, Ellen stands up and walks right into the fire.

0:04:50
Unknown_02: And it's on that spot that she dies. Burns to death, right in the middle of Cabrini.

Unknown_00: Damn, white women sure do be crazy. The main character, whose name is Anthony McCoy, lives with his girlfriend, and she just so happens to be an art director at an art gallery. He is an artist, so she puts him into contact with an art dealer, who happens to be white, and they have a discussion about what his expectations are for their first art show. And it goes about as well as you could expect with any white person in this movie.

0:05:26
Unknown_05: Who are you, man?

Unknown_05: Uh, well, this is Anthony McCoy of two years ago. I want the Anthony McCoy of the future. I want the great black hope of the Chicago art scene of tomorrow. That's the guy that I gave a solo show to straight out of grad school. Look, I really don't want to have to go to the trouble of replacing you in the summer show, but you're the only person who hasn't shown me what I'm actually putting up.

Unknown_09: I'm working on something. I dig into that history of yours, dude. I'm thinking about doing something about the projects and about how white supremacy... White people.

0:05:57
Unknown_05: Yeah, how it creates these spaces of rampant neglect for communities of color, in particular black communities.

Unknown_09: Yeah, yeah, yeah, like where you're from. Yeah, Brownsville. Eh, South Side is kind of played.

Unknown_09: Or Cabrini-Green.

Unknown_00: The idea that a white, yuppie art dealer from Chicago named Clive would reject Anthony's proposal to showcase art featuring black struggle by a black artist is so ridiculous that it doesn't need explanation. But Clive accepts his counteroffer to show some folklore from the hood, and he goes on a little field trip to talk to his friend Burke, who runs a laundromat, and learn more about the Candyman. As a result, Burke tells Anthony what happened to the kid that was seen in the start of the movie.

0:06:36
Unknown_00: That's right, the candy man wasn't going to hurt the kid at all and literally just wanted to give him candy.

0:07:22
Unknown_00: Now we meet the real monster of the film. Oh my god, it's a white person. Get out of there, kid.

Unknown_00: I was not joking, the monster of this movie is white people. Just like in real life.

0:07:56
Unknown_00: So now we're at the day of the art exhibition. The big day that he's been preparing for. But oh no! There's an evil white lady and she's the art critic. I don't think she'll like his art project.

Unknown_00: Because he's black.

Unknown_07: This is quite a departure from your previous work.

Unknown_09: Go ahead, open it. I'm trying to align these moments in time that exist in the same place.

Unknown_09: The idea is to almost calibrate tragedy into a focused lineage that culminates in the now.

0:08:32
Unknown_09: Priya, tell your boy not to hug the critic.

Unknown_06: He's got a whole thing.

Unknown_05: Yeah, no, I know. I heard it. It's complicated.

Unknown_06: Well, she's interacting with the piece.

Unknown_09: The mirror invites you to attempt the summoning yourself. Anyway, I don't know why I'm standing next to my own piece like some kind of asshole.

Unknown_09: The work speaks for itself.

Unknown_07: Oh, it speaks, all right. It speaks in didactic knee-jerk cliches about the ambient violence of the gentrification cycle.

0:09:13
Unknown_07: But your kind are the real pioneers of that cycle, you know?

Unknown_09: Excuse me?

Unknown_07: Artists.

Unknown_07: Artists descend upon disenfranchised neighborhoods, defining cheap rent so that they can dick around in their studios without the crushing burden of a day job.

Unknown_07: I'm gonna get another drink.

Unknown_00: What? She basically just says that artists are responsible for gentrification because they want cheap rent.

Unknown_00: You know, I always like the complaints about gentrification and white flight because if white people move to a neighborhood and make it better, then it becomes more expensive and black people get priced out. but if white people leave a neighborhood that black people live in then it decreases the value of the property and it's called white flight and that's also bad so whitey really is evil no matter what they try to do and this stupid bitch is just saying random shit and blaming artists But now we get the first death of the movie. The obnoxious white art dealer and the art hoe side piece that he's with decide to test out the Candyman on the mirror that he's provided for his exhibit. And surprise, it works. Let's do it here then.

0:09:57
Unknown_05: Um, no, I've been here all day.

Unknown_04: Come on.

Unknown_05: Candyman. Are you serious?

Unknown_04: Quiet, bitch.

0:10:48
Unknown_04: Candyman. Candyman.

Unknown_04: Candyman. See?

Unknown_04: Nothing. So much for that.

Unknown_01: Girls get the bullet really isn't any nice way to put it you gotta put your foot down sometimes Some brats deserve to die I said eat girls get the rope Sorry guys, you know I tried it's how it goes. I wish you didn't have to be this way, but some tolls you just gotta pay I said eat girls get the rope

0:11:41
Unknown_00: So there we are, the first two on-camera deaths of the movie, and the score is Candyman 2, Whitey 0. I cut out a lot of the editing in that death scene, but it kind of implies already that Anthony is becoming the Candyman himself, which is a bit of an interesting thing, as far as a plot point goes, because of something I'll explain later. But Anthony isn't done getting his revenge yet. The yuppie white people are already dead, but there's still that bitchy art critic who has to die. And the great thing about what's about to come up is that Anthony actually provokes it. It's not just happenstance. Anthony deliberately murders this woman. And literally, so far, their only crimes are that they don't care about his black empowerment art project, which is kinda lazy and shitty.

0:12:21
Unknown_07: I'm just saying that...

Unknown_07: All of a sudden, your work seems eternal.

Unknown_09: I'm surprised at how positive your take on my piece seems to be now.

Unknown_07: Well, it grew on me.

Unknown_09: Seemed like you didn't quite get it.

Unknown_00: This is actually a common theme within this movie. White people resent black people, but only because they're jealous. See, now that the work has been tied to two murders at the art museum, it has new meaning. The Candyman is now famous, and so is his art project. So the bitchy art lady also wants to be in on the ground floor and has to co-op this black artist and his black artwork in order to benefit herself, as white people tend to do because they are evil.

0:12:54
Unknown_07: Oh, I get it. It's the hood, gentrification, et cetera.

Unknown_09: Artists gentrify the hood?

Unknown_09: Who do you think makes the hood?

0:13:32
Unknown_09: The city cuts off a community and waits for it to die.

Unknown_09: Then they invite developers in and say, hey, you artists, you young people, you white, preferably or only, please come to the hood. It's cheap.

Unknown_09: And if you stick it out for a couple of years, we'll bring you a Whole Foods.

Unknown_09: You want to be a part of the story, right?

Unknown_07: Well, as a critic, I... To really engage with the work.

Unknown_09: To get it.

Unknown_09: You should say it.

0:14:05
Unknown_06: Say what?

Unknown_09: Say his name. I think I need to use the bathroom. Oh, this is a good a time as any.

Unknown_00: I want you to imagine this in any other context. A person who has no idea what a gun is finds a gun. You know what a gun is. And you tell him, point it at your face and pull the trigger. I dare you. And he does, and he kills himself. That would be considered murder, I believe. It would definitely be your fault, regardless of what the legal status is. But that's exactly what Anthony does here. And her only crime is that she wants to further her career as an art critic by promoting his art now that there's a reason to. I mean, she's still a bitch, but she doesn't deserve to be this.

0:14:36
Unknown_00: At this point, you have to wonder whose revenge fantasy is this? Is this Peele's? Is this Nia DaCosta's? Is it Will Rosenfeld's? I mean, who wronged the writer or director or producer to make him want to kill white people who are involved in art? Because that is clearly what this is. All the other Candymen have backstories that are pretty horrific and based in less equal periods of time. But for Anthony, literally nothing happens to him. He's a new artist and people don't like his art because he doesn't have a name and he doesn't have a defined style yet. Why do they have to die for this? So now Anthony returns to Burke for some explanations as to why his skin's getting all oogly, and why he's having hallucinations, and why people are being murdered. Specifically people he doesn't like. And Burke explains to him that the Candyman is actually multiple people. People who are black, and who have been wronged by Whitey. So, naturally, Anthony is becoming the next Candyman, because bitchy white people don't like his art. Anthony.

0:15:42
Unknown_09: What is he?

0:16:15
Unknown_11: Candyman ain't a he. Candyman's the whole damn hive.

Unknown_11: There are others.

Unknown_11: Samuel Evans, run down during the white housing riots of the 50s.

Unknown_11: William Bell, lynched in the 20s.

Unknown_11: But the first one, where it all began, was in the 1890s. It's the story Helen found, the story of Daniel Robitaille.

Unknown_11: He made a good living touring the country painting portraits for wealthy families, mostly white. And they loved.

0:16:49
Unknown_11: But you know how it goes.

Unknown_11: They love what we make.

Unknown_00: That's one of the strangest lines in the entire movie, and I would like to interrupt just to talk about it for a second, because it feels like it comes directly from Jordan Peele. In the other movies that Jordan Peele has been a part of, they always seem to be focused first on the horror, and the social commentary is just sort of a thing that's a part of it. And that's fine, you can make a movie like that. But this movie doesn't have any horror. You see the monster in full in the first three seconds and there's not really anything scary. It's almost just white people being murdered for fun and nothing else really happens. Sometimes some scary stuff happens with Anthony hallucinating. Other times there's some pretty good body horror which I'll show in a second. But really, it just seems to be a commentary about how people feel about Jordan Peele's work. They like his work, but for whatever reason, they don't like him. It seems like he's being snubbed by the Hollywood elite, and he's angry about that. So he puts it into this movie. It's easy to understand why Jordan Peele might be upset about this. If you look at Rotten Tomatoes, all of his movies are considered some of the best movies ever made. They compete directly with Citizen Kane as some of the best films ever created. Despite all that acclaim and ball-washing from the critics, he probably doesn't get what he feels he deserves from his friends and Hollywood elites. Simply because he's black and his films offer some social commentary, people feel required to give his movies the highest acclaim possible, when they're simply okay films that do some interesting things and appeal to an audience while offering some social commentary. If people gave honest criticisms about his film and gave them honest reviews, instead of just telling him that he's the bestest boy ever, he might not be so frustrated. And like all black people frustrated with certain systems like Hollywood Delete, he's never going to identify what's actually happening. He's going to direct his rage and frustration at the wrong people simply because that's the only outlet he is given. One day, he's commissioned to paint the daughter of a Chicago factory owner who made his fortune in the stockyards.

0:18:42
Unknown_11: Robitaille committed the ultimate sin of his time.

Unknown_11: They fell in love.

Unknown_11: They had an affair. She got pregnant. The girl tells her father-in-law, you know, he hired some men to hunt Robitaille down, told him to get creative.

0:19:24
Unknown_11: chase him through here in the middle of the day. He collapses from exhaustion right near where the old tower and chestnut used to be. They beat him.

Unknown_11: Torture him. They cut off his arm and jam a meat hook at the stump. They smear honeycomb from the nearby hives on his chest and let the bees sting him. A crowd started to form to watch the show.

Unknown_11: The big finale.

Unknown_11: They set him on fire.

Unknown_11: And he finally dies.

Unknown_11: But a story like that

Unknown_11: Pain like that lasts forever.

0:20:01
Unknown_11: That's Candyman.

Unknown_11: So, he's real? Bell is real. Samuel, Sherman, Daniel Rubenstein, they're all real.

Unknown_11: Candyman is how we deal with the fact that these things happened. That they're still happening.

Unknown_00: Right, so now that that's over, let's get back to killing white people.

Unknown_00: Hey, Wynne Rosenfeld, won't the audience wonder why these five innocent schoolgirls are being slaughtered by the Candyman? Oh yeah, Jordan, that's a good point. We'll have them bully a black girl first, right before they die.

0:20:41
Unknown_07: Katrina.

Unknown_07: Let's go. Wait, I forgot my vape. This is White Women 2021, fellow black men.

0:21:43
Unknown_01: Oh my god, guys, stop being so stupid.

Unknown_04: Kill white devils! Kill white devils! Kill white devils! Kill white devils! Kill white devils! Kill white devils! Kill white devils! Kill white devils! This is bad.

0:22:16
Unknown_00: So now that Anthony is done killing level 3 white women, he's ready to ascend to the next level and become a Super Saiyan Candyman. But first we need some exposition by Burke, who is apparently insane and who has been trying to recreate Candyman to invoke ultimate revenge against Whitey. Though I do want to point out that this scene has something really great about it that I like a lot. Throughout the entire movie, they have been applying makeup to Anthony to show a bee sting growing into something that takes over his whole body. And the body horror makeup and effects are really, really good. So I hope you enjoy that at least.

0:22:52
Unknown_11: When something leaves its name, even if you wash it out,

Unknown_11: a thinning deep in the fabric.

0:23:27
Unknown_11: This neighborhood got caught in a loop.

Unknown_11: The shit got stained in the exact same spot, over and over, until it finally rotted from the inside out.

Unknown_11: They tore down our homes so they could move back in. We need Candyman. Because this time, he'll be killing their fathers.

Unknown_11: I knew it was only a matter of time before the baby came back here in perfect symmetry.

0:24:02
Unknown_11: A chance for Candyman to take back what's rightfully his.

Unknown_00: So basically, Anthony was the little baby that the crazy white woman stole at the beginning of the movie, and Burke believes that by recreating Candyman with Anthony and sacrificing his girlfriend to him, he'd be able to protect the hood from the gentrifying white people. That is literally what he says and what the plot of the movie is. So the girlfriend resists this and runs away and ends up killing Burke in a fight.

0:24:44
Unknown_08: I think he's dead."

Unknown_00: Anthony, who is now dying of COVID-19 and related oogliness all over his body, collapses into her arms.

Unknown_00: The police had been called by Burke, I guess because as soon as the Candyman had been created, he would want the police to be there so that Candyman can start killing Whitey as soon as possible. Unfortunately for her, this happens.

Unknown_00: Blam. Blammy blam blamo. As soon as the police arrive, they start shooting the incapacitated man covered in sores laying in a woman's lap next to a dead body. Clearly the most pertinent threat in the entire room. She is then apprehended for her crime of being black.

0:25:15
Unknown_00: Not content with having just murdered her boyfriend, the police also need to cover each other's asses because that's what police do. So they tell her she better keep her fucking mouth quiet or she's going to jail for murder.

Unknown_10: Whatever you tell us helps.

Unknown_10: Any cooperation is noted.

0:25:54
Unknown_10: Saying what you saw when he came at Jones.

Unknown_10: And Jones, obviously knowing what he'd done before, seeing his hook, knowing you were in danger, had no choice but to discharge his weapon. Doesn't sound right to you? Or... she's an accomplice.

Unknown_10: She held the victims down, he caught him up.

Unknown_10: He died coming at a cop.

Unknown_10: She goes to jail for the rest of her life.

Unknown_00: Luckily, she has one last trick up her sleeve and asks the policeman to let her see herself in his rearview mirror.

0:26:38
Unknown_03: What you're seeing now is my normal state. Candyman.

Unknown_03: This is a Super Saiyan. Candyman.

Unknown_03: And this, this is what is known as a Super Saiyan that has ascended past a Super Saiyan.

Unknown_06: Candyman.

Unknown_11: Has he really found a way to surpass an ascended Saiyan? What the fuck is that?

Unknown_01: I mean, what would that make him? Double ascended? Candyman. And this is to go even further beyond! Candyman. Who are you?

0:27:53
Unknown_08: I am the writing on the walls.

Unknown_08: I am the sweet smell of blood on the street.

Unknown_08: The buzz that echoes in the alleyways.

Unknown_08: They will say I shed innocent blood.

Unknown_08: You are far from innocent, but they'll say you were.

Unknown_08: That's all that matters.

0:28:28
Unknown_00: I guess in modern movies, cops are kind of like Nazis in that you can just kill as many as you want, and you don't have to be concerned with, like, families, personal goals, their children, or anything like that, because they're just evil. Here, watch, that one dies too.

Unknown_00: So using the power of demonic forces and ghosts and demons, black people were able to solve racism by simply killing all white people and everyone lived happily ever after the end. So what do I think of the movie?

0:29:15
Unknown_06: Well, it's a pretty literal approach.

Unknown_06: Not much room for viewer interpretation, you know, moving from the symbolism of violence to the actual depiction of it.

Unknown_09: Okay, but how is it hitting you?

Unknown_06: It's painful.