Cabrini Green.
Growing up in far southeastern Wisconsin, just across the border from Illinois, a mere 40 minutes from greater Chicago, watching NBC 5, and listening to WMAQ news, it was hard to avoid.
The crimes, the murders, the general ill-at-ease. I thought the place was somewhere evil, like Amityville, or Mordor. The fam even drove past it once; its high rise project jagging up into the gray Chicago sky, with nothing around it to serve as protection, buffer, or dilution.
Those two words, that separate or together, don't sound inherently sinister, still drew the occasion chill.
Cabrini Green.
It's not there anymore, the way it was, of course, razed for gentrification and real estate profiteering, it doesn't pass for the ghetto, or the hood, or whatever term was trendy in the 80s and 90's. But Jordan Peele's scripted Candyman sequel wonders if it's haunted. The Bernard Rose directed original (based on Clive Barker's The Forbidden) presents you with reasons why it may be.
As a kid, we challenged each other to go into closets, and repeat "I Believe in Bloody Mary" 5 times and she was supposed to emerge. This era of urban legend is what Virginia Madsen and Kasi Lemmons' characters were using as their research thesis in the 1992 version. Instead of Bloody Mary, the one to be summoned was Candyman.
George Romero in a commentary for Dawn of the Dead, described Dario Argento's separately edited version of Dawn as "straight Chi", when held up to his own, and that comparison can made here. Bernard Rose's original is more straight to the throat horror than the Nia DaCosta version, which is brightly flourishing with social commentary and allegory. With characters that are fun to listen to, and grow attached to due to Jordan Peele's infinitely smart writing. In his film, Bernard Rose paints a picture of people haunted by their surroundings, fearing a legend, fearing what's around the corner as it is exacerbated by children's songs and adult's warnings, often manufactured to protect their kids and get them home before dark. A haunted community like this makes one wonder if the creators of Halloween Ends didn't take a peek at these two films and draw some inspiration from them.
But I digress.
The residents of the project knew better. And what not to say in front of the mirror.
Of course, you have your standard couple of outsiders who want to know too much. Madsen and Lemmons venture where they don't belong and ask questions that should remain unanswered. (In DaCosta’s film, Our lead initially goes looking to see what the original’s pair learned.) What results is a horror film of the highest order with great performances, and an antagonist in Tony Todd's Candyman, (Daniel Robitaille in his living days) that's pretty damn hard to top.
DaCosta's monster is much the same, while she addresses social injustice as just as dangerous; white police on black violence is addressed here. Gentrification is addressed here. Profiteering off of the land once allotted as low income housing. In the 1992 film, Candyman is the boogeyman, while in the 2019 version Candyman is a symbol, a warning, for those who cross an unwise path into territory they don't belong in, to take what is not theirs. And there are those who believe that walking talisman is necessary. It needs to return and to live on.
I highly recommend both films for this time of year; they're different, but connected in just the right ways. Watching them back to back would be a trip, as the tone and message separate from one another, but the legend, the evil, and just enough character reference enjoins them. They dovetail nicely. I've never seen the two sequels that fall in between the original and this one, but I've read elements are brought in by the new blood to subtly connect them all, or are at the least, referenced. I can't speak to that, but it would be a nice touch.
No comments:
Post a Comment