GUESS WHO'S BACK

PRODUCER JORDAN PEELE AND DIRECTOR NIA DACOSTA HAVE ETCHED A NEW CHAPTER IN THE TERRIFYING LEGEND OF CANDYMAN. TOTAL FILM FINDS OUT HOW THE FILM USES BLOOD AND BRAINS TO EXPLORE THE BLACK EXPERIENCE…

- JAMIE GRAHAM

Repeat this name to yourself: Nia DaCosta. It’s one you’ll come to know, and not only because, in August 2020, she signed up to direct Captain Marvel sequel The Marvels. No, it’s the reason she landed that blockbuster gig in the first place that will cause her name to be repeated again and again over the next few months.

That reason is Candyman, DaCosta’s striking new take on Bernard Rose’s iconic 1992 horror movie, which is in turn based on Clive Barker’s short story The Forbidden in his landmark Books Of Blood collection. For DaCosta, whose only previous feature credit is Crossing The Line (aka Little Woods), a moody crime drama starring Tessa Thompson and Lily James, landing the Candyman gig is a dream (nightmare?) come true.

“I was always into horror films,” she tells Total Film with a shiver of delight. “Even when I was a kid. Freddy Krueger movies, Jason movies. I used to watch Tales Of The Crypt in the dark by myself. I think they’re a cool way to look at who we are. And it’s fun being scared.”

As for Candyman starring Tony Todd as the hook-handed, gravel-voiced killer who crosses from myth into Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing project to slay and slay again, DaCosta first knew of him, fittingly enough, through whispers rather than the film itself. “I was in Harlem, in the fifth or sixth grade,” she recalls. “I just remember Candyman being a part of life. Like legend, lore. We didn’t dare say his name in the mirror [Todd’s bogeyman is summoned by repeating “Candyman” five times into a looking glass]. For me, Candyman felt so real. It felt like he could totally exist in the projects by my house.”