Man in the Mirror

A reimagining of one of the scariest – and most politically charged – genre movies ever made, the new Cand yman is horror for the Black Lives Matter era. Director Nia DaCosta and stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Teyonah Parris discuss terrors new and old, imagined and all too real…

- JAMIE GRAHAM

I was in Harlem,” starts Nia DaCosta, the director of the new imagining of Candyman. She’s trying to recall the first time she watched Bernard Rose’s 1992 original, a horror movie so terrifying it’s still whispered of to this day. And here’s the thing: she can’t. “I was in the fifth or sixth grade, and I just remember Candyman being a part of life,” she muses. “Like legend, lore. We didn’t dare say his name in the mirror. For me, Candyman felt so real. It felt like he could totally exist in the projects by my house.”

For leading man Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, it’s the same. “Man, I remember images of Candyman but I don’t remember sitting down to watch the movie,” he says. “He lived in my imagination, in the retelling of Candyman. I grew up with Candyman not being a figure from television or movies, but with the possibility of him being a real threat within the house. The dread of Candyman was palpable.”

Is there a theme here? It seems so. “I wasn’t allowed to watch the movie, but I remember seeing the image of Candyman,” shudders female lead Teyonah Parris. “We knew we were not supposed to say ‘Candyman’ in the mirror five times. My brothers and I would taunt each other with that. The legend of Candyman was definitely a part of my childhood.”