Tag Archives: horror

Say Their Names: Nia DaCosta’s “Candyman”

Nia DaCosta’s slasher flick “Candyman”, a simultaneous reboot of and sequel to the 1992 movie of the same title, arrives on to cinema screens fully formed and awash with meaning and symbolism. Co-written by DaCosta alongside Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld, the effort is only DaCosta’s second directorial piece before graduating up to 2022’s “The Marvels” for her third, a now familiar fast-track route through Hollywood which will render her the youngest director of an MCU movie ahead of previous navigator of the same journey, Ryan Coogler. This buzz is notable given the stubborn paucity of high-profile female directors, and much deserved on this evidence.

As immaculate directorially as “Candyman” seems, it nonetheless bears so many of the hallmarks co-writer Jordan Peele has made his own across only two previous films directed in the shape of “Get Out” and “Us”, the former in particular a powerful acclaim magnet, the latter a somewhat underrated gem; most prominently, Peele’s vast subtextual architecture and his brilliance of pop-cultural touch. Like any horror film worth its salt, “Candyman” expertly confects its authenticity from a grab-bag of conceptual sources, made all the more challenging by its having to juggle many of the elements inherited from the narrative of the 1992 original, which was but one year removed from the magnum opus of this feat within the slasher and horror spheres, “The Silence Of The Lambs”. As we shall explore, it aces this feat on its own terms.

Those devices from the original movie, be they based in storytelling or in theory, were already irresistible, and the new film sagely makes no attempt to step away, instead incorporating and sometimes flipping them to immense effect. The chief promotional posters of the two aforementioned 90s films are informative in this regard; “The Silence Of The Lambs” features a moth covering a mouth, the original “Candyman” goes with a bee crawling over an eye. Both are adapted from novelistic work, but utilise the potency of cinema to amplify the composite parts of their stories and surrounding media.

This is instructive as a general guide to film-makers, and horror-makers especially. DaCosta, Peele and Rosenfeld proceed accordingly. The original setting, Chicago’s infamous Cabrini-Green housing projects, is remixed through the lens of gentrification in the contemporary film, blending in sociopolitical context with ease. While the specific avenue perhaps goes underexplored as the film develops, it acts as an in for Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s burgeoning but doubtful artist Anthony McCoy, and flows into a generalised soup of racial injustice, sat firmly in the movie’s crosshairs.

At a lean and utterly fruitful 90 minutes, “Candyman” is exquisitely paced and plotted, with nary a wasted frame. Those plot components really are delicious, from the moment the studio imprimaturs appear reversed on screen in foreshadowing reference to the centrality of mirrors in the Candyman story. The chilling, eerie opening credits are superbly scored, with disorientating, upended graphics paying tribute to the Chicago setting and the psychogeography of the story (and, indirectly, positing an alternate version of Wilco’s cover art for “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”, the Marina City towers). These smile-inducing lower key moments are classic Peele cornerstones, from the man whose “Us” (and its trailer specifically) irreversibly repositioned Luniz’ 1995 smash “I Got 5 On It” as a horrorcore anthem.

Some outlets, understandably drawn into Peele’s contribution to the film, billed “Candyman” as something akin to ‘this year’s “Get Out”’. While race is pivotal to the story, in structural terms this seems very misleading. “Get Out” was a masterpiece in the subversion of audience expectations; anyone who didn’t leave every item of psychological baggage at the screen door was liable to ride the rollercoaster. The film was grandly metaphorical, allowing for a useful degree of stealth in the promotion and plotting of the movie, but focused heavily on what can be broadly described as liberal complicity in racial oppression, certainly in a US-specific context. The ingeniously-titled “Us”, to take a quick detour, was contrasting; while race remained a part of the package, it was class, nowadays mistakenly much-maligned as a theme, and inequality which the film targeted in a decidedly high-concept but quietly intersectional fashion.

The thematic and narrative scaffolding of “Candyman” is much different to either film, and “Get Out” in particular. From the outset, there is an overtness of theme in the plotting which was absent from “Get Out”, where screenwriter intentions were deeply submerged. Abdul-Mateen is excellent as McCoy deteriorates into body horror while his artistic fortunes simultaneously threaten to prosper, as is Teyonah Parris as his girlfriend Brianna, an art gallery director, conveniently enough. Some of the most telling moments can be found between script lines, in the various conversational scenes between the pair, Brianna’s brother and various other associates, which reveal the flick’s worldview on race and art, unsurprisingly a key concern in the film’s scenes. Some of these zingers are as cutting as Candyman’s hook.

The same goes for dialogue between McCoy and the snooty, ridiculous art critic Finley Stephens, whose condescension is potently white, middle class and ultimately opportunistic, but representative of a world into which Anthony and Brianna are, in what seems a materially simplistic but spiritually destructive choice, hoping to advance further. If viewers find themselves pondering why, that is of course intentional; the question of whether black advancement through white structures of society and imagination can ever really represent emancipation is posed.

The film does therefore match “Get Out” in being largely concerned with the imposition of violence on racial minorities. The reflection of this in McCoy’s disintegration through his art, once he is exposed to the Cabrini-Green legend of the title character, is another delectable line of the plot which stands tailor-made for the hands of a director and writer pairing as glowed up as DaCosta and Peele are currently.

Nonetheless, as mentioned, the parallel is far from direct. By interrogating the role art has to play in ending black oppression, if any, “Candyman” toys tantalisingly with black guilt and complicity, potential dynamite for a scriptwriter, but handled sensitively here. The look on Brianna’s face as another gallery director soliloquises that the roots of her enthusiasm for hiring Brianna in fact grow from her partner’s rising stock after his works on the Candyman are connected to the film’s grisly murders is brilliantly shot and perfectly acted in silence, a thousand yard stare which encapsulates the complexity of their own relationship and the film’s thematic fault lines.

Thus, like the mirror images throughout “Candyman” which are imperfect rather than bearing the symmetry we would normally anticipate, the reflection some may see between “Get Out” and this flick is not sublimely drawn. The fact that this inversion of mirroring itself mirrors the content of “Candyman” is highly paradoxical, but we do not need to peer beyond the confines of this film to find another, more relevant example. The film is bookended by scenes of police violence and injustice against black people. Every instance of the story’s notorious centrepoint, that uttering Candyman’s name in the mirror five times will summon him, is coloured by his gruesome dispatching of whoever follows the instructions. The lone exception occurs in the climactic scene, whereby the fabric of this arrangement is completely altered. Structurally speaking therefore, via any of the many scenes in the film featuring a mirror, the work as a whole is littered with metonymy. 

The final scene bears a more significant meaning in relation to the direct thematics at hand. The audience cannot be certain that the stated switch in dynamics we have witnessed is permanent, by virtue of the film concluding, although it does so in a manner which seems self-consciously ripe for sequels. We already know via the character of William Burke, the main conduit of information to McCoy and pitched perfectly shiftily by Colman Domingo, that the Candyman legend encompasses multiple iterations of the supposed monster, detailed visually and enticingly via shadow puppetry which seamlessly interweaves critical aspects of the original film. In one of the movie’s most important quotes, Burke states “Candyman ain’t a ‘he’, Candyman’s the whole damn hive”. This is delivered amid myriad explanatory twists as we approach the movie’s denouement, all of which embolden the considerable subtext of the story at a tornado’s pace.

That is to say, Candyman is representative of racial injustice and suffering at large. The ultimate call-back is to the character’s origin story, that of the 19th century artist brutally tortured and murdered for falling in love with a wealthy white woman. It seems incorrect to claim that the 1992 original was ahead of its time in espousing these themes when the Los Angeles riots occurred in the same year, but even for a tale as old as America itself, the lore of the Candyman universe seems to slot appallingly well into the young decade that is the 2020s, with audiences stuttering to catch up to the aesthetic and topical sequencing of the original in the years following its debut.

As ubiquitous an icon as Candyman is therefore rendered come the film’s closure, we can read much into the eventualities which unfold. The film is an interrogation of the reform cycle and its relationship with predeterminism. With the conclusion thoroughly subsuming our protagonists into the endemic savagery McCoy’s art looks to reflect and examine, the film asks whether legal mechanisms of reform are superior to violent ones, whether either achieve progress quickly enough and whether artistic endeavours have any role to play in the pursuit of justice, as well as whether any of these options or the outcomes of such choices are inevitable. The plotting of the film is undoubtedly cyclical, if we isolate the progression and fate of McCoy’s character and the way this relates to the underpinning provided by both the themes and the multi-layered narrative, a most sturdy bedrock.

Another keystone unveiled by the film’s development, in its final stages in particular, is the prevalence of unreliable narrators. “Candyman”, as expected from Peele, packs a certain degree of self-reflexivity, and is undoubtedly aware of the folkloric strands entangled within the various levels of its plotting. The importance of who tells a story and why is underlined very effectively as the story unfurls and blossoms, undoubtedly a pivotal point in a work which leverages the state-sanctioned killing of innocent black people as part of its didactic brew.

McCoy titles his first exhibition after learning of the Candyman yarn “Say His Name”, offering a mirror by way of invitation for the observer to engage with the art in a more immersive way than can be comfortable, with extremely bloody consequences. While we’re talking promotional posters, the new film’s art prominently utilises the similar “Say It”. The interplay between this element of the film series and the killing of Breonna Taylor by police officers in Louisville, Kentucky in 2020, which would (eventually) prove to be a major part of civil unrest around racism in the US and globally last year, seems inextricable. “Say Her Name” became the hashtag and slogan of protests against the slaying, another chilling, off-kilter mirroring linked to the iconography of “Candyman”. Similarly, having ventured down this street of thought, I was unable to ignore the similarity between the names of Breonna and the character of Brianna here.

While some believe that the surge in Hollywood focus on American racism since the early 2010s is sullied by the obvious financial motivation of the studios, it must be contended that films as intelligently and pointedly drawn on the issue as “Candyman”, which in this installment bucks the trend of pointless remakes and toxic franchising, will remain totally essential for as long as racial inequality perseveres. With the wrong people continuing to tell the stories, that will remain a long time.

Breakups, No Makeups: Ari Aster’s “Midsommar”

“Midsommar” is Ari Aster’s second full-length writing and directorial effort after 2018’s notable breakout flick “Hereditary”. It shares many of that debut’s hallmarks as far as Aster’s style goes; he is not an artist whose instinct is to reach for the jugular, eschewing such naked ambition as relates to the horror genre in favour of slowly evolving, and in this case deeply felt, tension punctuated by narrative shocks. The effect is to possibly leave some fans of traditional horror wanting more, but general cinema enthusiasts are likely to draw great sustenance from his limited body of work thus far. Contrary to an off-kilter guess by one of my friends, the film is a movie most probably unlike any you have seen before, not a big-screen adaptation of the lightweight British detective show Midsomer Murders(!).

To a greater extent than “Hereditary”, I would venture that “Midsommar” is not a particularly scary film, regardless of how it was marketed. It is an extremely tense and eerie piece which ramps up in carefully prescribed increments. The movie chronicles a grouping of American friends who follow their Swedish college peer Pelle back to Europe to experience a once-every-90-years festival amongst his home community. The main focus is on Dani, played outstandingly by Florence Pugh, who has experienced very recent trauma and whose relationship with her boyfriend Christian (also in attendance and played by Jack Reynor) seems to have entered its death throes. Will Poulter is relied on for much of the comedic sarcasm as Mark and William Jackson Harper is another notable character in the form of Josh. The opening scenes of the film in America are highly critical in establishing the character dynamics at play, which they do very efficiently, clearly portraying Dani’s uneasy relationship with the remainder of the group. Aster’s pacing of the story is tremendous, with great value apparent in the expository scenes which occur around dinner tables throughout, acting as checkpoints for our characters as events spiral.

Aster has rapidly codified his position as a creator whose films come as puzzleboxes. Just as in “Hereditary”, he scatters visual clues as to eventual happenings throughout, generally in the form of actual, expressive images. This merely enhances the foreboding of the film. Having seen both of his films in the cinema with larger groups than I am typically accustomed to attending the multiplex with, I have already noticed that Aster’s work provokes considerable debate as to meaning and leaves the audience walking away with plenty to discuss in terms of what they have actually just seen occur. The use of drawn imagery within the tapestry of the story establishes a roadmap for circumnavigating a collective reading of the film, which has struck me as an effective and interesting callback technique. Although it may be malleable to argued interpretation, Aster likes to weave a mythos.

To me, “Midsommar” has several thematic currents running through it. One seems to be the hidden darkness of social democracy. Scandinavian countries and those generally affiliated to them (chiefly Iceland and, especially, Finland) have been widely acclaimed as paragons of societal excellence. In the same way that those on the Remain side of the hellish fever dream that is Brexit have largely ignored the rise of the far-right throughout mainland Europe across all of the continent’s classic fault lines (to say nothing of the once-unthinkable corresponding rise in fascist thought in the UK itself), any idyllic portrayal of Sweden would need to turn a blind eye to the constant march of the fascistic, nationalist Sweden Democrats party during the last decade, as the issue of immigration (as part of a somewhat unspoken debate on globalisation) has served to poison the body politic of the nation in much the same way as it has around Europe. Reading a rejection of outsiders and foreigners who fail to ‘respect’ and ‘honour’ the norms of a community into a watching of “Midsommar” is not the stuff of academia, although it can just as easily be taken as a play on Americans’ fear of the outside world, toying with American domestic anxiety in the way almost every great American horror film ever made has done.

Although much more subtle, gender relations seem a touchstone here as well, as I shall comment on momentarily. While in the context of the film Midsommar is a fictional festival, it is based on traditional Swedish summer gatherings. Part of the genius of Aster’s writing is to intertwine these ideas with concepts such as ättestupa, ancient Swedish sites where ritual senicide apparently took place, and the ‘blood eagle’ method of ritual execution, also drawn from Scandinavian history. These twists in the tale, among the movie’s wooziest and most nauseous, evidence a beautifully researched film and are embedded effortlessly, lending the movie what I would call a synthetic or confected authenticity from a melding of disparate but interrelated parts, which makes a profound sense to viewers of the film even if only subliminally, and is one of the hardest achievements in writing of any form; Aster seamlessly inserts dusted-down folklore from the cultural framework within which he has set his story, in an expert appeal to the comparatively contemporary form that is the horror movie. The character of Josh has some familiarity with these concepts and seems an on-screen proxy of Aster’s in this sense, as he aspires to complete his thesis on midsummer traditions. Aster still cannot resist a more typical nod to horror, as Josh, a black character, and despite race not having factored into the film overtly, is the first we see meet his end, with what is displayed as an at least minor form of insider knowledge shielding him not one bit once his curiosity gets the better of him and he attempts to steal the commune’s most sacred document.

It was not long after the film’s release before accounts of how some of these festivities have been experienced from a female vantage point surfaced, replete with sexual entitlement and violence. There is nothing to suggest that this is uniquely Swedish; instead, it only seems to be uniquely male, occurring as it does in a patriarchal society. I refer there to Sweden at large but the same seems to apply to Pelle’s community; the gender roles seem very traditionally imagined and, notwithstanding Dani’s merciless redemption, men still seem to be the smirking winners. Although Dani is not exposed to sexual harm on screen, undercurrents of sexual expectation and coercion permeate her one-to-one conversations with Pelle, which are deeply uncomfortable, and seem far more sinister than those she has with her feckless, sad-sack boyfriend Christian, whose behaviour and fashion choices in the movie combined to gain the character a meme as “scoop neck T-shirt guy”, someone women should steer clear of but only for reasons of deceit with a side-serving of significant disappointment. As opposed to Pelle however, he did at least never attempt to crowbar his way into a twisted knight in shining armour narrative as part of a wider scheme to position himself and Dani as figureheads of the cult at the centre of the movie while the bodies pile up in the background.

Both because “Midsommar” is a strange and unsettling film and also because some of it seems written for absurdity, audiences are likely to find themselves laughing as much as gasping throughout. That was certainly the case when I saw it, and this heightens the atmosphere in which this film should be viewed, for me. A scene towards the film’s conclusion when a villager selected by lottery is cheerily prompted to come forward to be considered for execution in the style of a “The Price Is Right” contestant had me suppressing a belly laugh. You may need to check both your pulse and your sense of the comedic if you can get through the film’s crescendo-ing centrepiece of a sex scene without some hysterical chuckling. This soon-to-be infamous scene is among the most musically-inclined of coital presentations I can recall on screen, requiring only the human voice as an instrument. The uniqueness of “Midsommar” unfolding almost entirely in daylight at the height of Swedish summer, possibly unprecedented for a horror flick, is worth mentioning and serves to enhance the already radiant cinematography and use of bold, striking colour throughout. However, to me sound, or more specifically a lack of it, is the most essential element of the film, and this scene is just one example of why.

The film is scored by visionary British producer The Haxan Cloak, whose 2013 album “Excavation” remains an intense capturing of how sound can shift psychic earth. His detailing of how he interrogated traditional folk music, employed a specialist in the interpretation of sacred texts through singing and had his own non-existent instruments crafted in the same vein in order to lovingly and organically ensnare the sound needed to bring “Midsommar” to its maximum potential is well worth tracking down. The score lends the film vitality and is every bit as central to it as any of the acting, photography or writing; there is no hierarchy. All of these facets coexist in a steadying equilibrium constituting the essence of the completed film. Whether he had any involvement in the aforementioned sex scene is not known to me, but would be no surprise since it is entirely operatic.

This synthesis between the writing of the film’s music and Aster’s story itself is best exemplified by an unnamed character; an oracle who is the product of incest. Disabled people seem to have an almost divine status within this community, and the paintings of this individual form the basis for the group’s sacred manuscripts. Although not seemingly formally mute, the oracle is essentially presented as such. Absence of sound becomes integral to the film as it develops. When Christian is paralysed during the movie’s denouement, he is also unable to communicate in any way as he meets a surreal demise. The deceased, who are served up around him in a macabre, ceremonial fashion, are presented in a way which suggests an excision of the head from the human body; a grotesque, mocking neutralisation of the vocal chords. This seems to nod silently to the way in which silence drives horror in certain communities, which spreads like contagion through cities, countries and continents in turn. Some viewers may scoff at my earlier suggestion that there were suggestions of the dynamic of rape or even sexual violence in some of the film’s scenes, but a critical tenet of rape culture is that rape does not have to be mentioned to be considered normal or even to occur. Silence, a central thematic thread of “Midsommar” to these eyes (and ears), brings sexual and political violence in its wake, from the Swedish backwoods to Washington, D.C. Every character to appear in this film deserves a better, more consensual and mutually understanding world.

One of the most astonishing things about “Midsommar” is that it is Aster’s attempt to fuse the traditional slasher film with a breakup film, the latter concept being the one which unlocked the realisation of the former concept for him, based on his own breakup. You cannot help but ask how savage a breakup Aster went through to devise this story, particularly once you have witnessed the choices Dani makes at the movie’s conclusion! One of the other most astonishing things, for which we should give considerable thanks, is that a movie this madcap was commissioned. We need to celebrate the fact that this is one of the barmiest movies you are ever likely to see. There is no doubt that it will divide audiences down its centre; among those I attended it with, one described it as “The Wicker Man turned down”, another independently as “The Wicker Man on speed”! The glorious and sometimes gruesome insanity of the film, which transports us to an otherworld where we catch potent glimpses of our own, ought to be enough for any viewer to take the plunge. Aster has hinted that he is done with horror, and even if “Midsommar” proves to be his magnum opus of horror or just in general, I can’t help but have the impression that what constitutes horror to us may differ significantly to what falls into the bracket for this most enthralling of young writers and directors.