Originally written August 3rd, 2014.
The internet was abuzz with talk about Guardians of the Galaxy this year. The biggest question seemed to be “How will mainstream audiences be able to handle a talking raccoon and a giant tree-man?”. The answer is simple- Water everything down to a family and consumer friendly package. Who cares about those trivial things like interesting characters and a compelling story? They’ve got to make their money back, darn it!
I’m not exactly a big expert when it comes to the GotG comics, but I have been reading the current series since it started last year. The thing I like the most about the series is the characters and their banter. The clashing personalities of the ramshackle team leads to great dialog and is generally fun to read. How does the film adaptation hold up? Well, they at least made them look like their comic book counterparts. Sorta.
Star-Lord is the resident Han Solo of the series. In the film, he’s just a generic bland protagonist. Chris Pratt was great casting for the role, but the writing is so bad that he can’t make much of it. Gamora is the other Han Solo of the series. (Okay, the entire team is just a bunch of Han Solos.) She’s a badass space assassin, but in the movie she’s kinda just there. Her fight scenes are scant and boring, and she’s completely butchered by a wooden performance. Zoe Saldana is easily the worst performance in the movie. When you’re being out-acted by Vin Diesel and redneck Michael Rooker, you know it’s bad.
Drax is basically Gamora mixed with Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the movie, he’s inexplicably gray instead of green (pulling a Hulk, maybe?) and played by professional wrestler Dave Bautista, who unsurprisingly gives a dull performance. (Seriously, stop putting wrestlers in movies. They can’t act.) Rocket Raccoon is the only enjoyable character in the film. Bradley Cooper is great at capturing the spirit of the angry runt, and the CG for the raccoon is never once distracting. It’s still clearly an effect, but it’s such a good effect that you don’t notice. God bless you, you crazed rodent. Groot is the team’s Chewbacca, a lumbering behemoth that can’t speak coherently. Unfortunately he’s relegated to the dopey comic relief for the film. They even gave him a more family friendly look, vaguely reminiscent of the guy from Little Big Planet, instead of his usual intimidating appearance.
So, they almost completely ruined the main characters. Surely the movie is at least nice to look at, right? Right? Nope. Take every boring sci-fi cliche and toss it in there. Generic dark/dank prison full of exposed pipes and circuitry? Check. Generic craggy abandoned planet? Check. Pristine 50’s-esque utopia? Check. Pointlessly shadowy and cavernous bad guy ship? Check, check, check and check.
I’m pretty sure 90% of the budget went to Rocket Raccoon and Groot. The CG on the pair looks great. It’s not distracting at all, and they both are stunning to look at. Well, except Groot’s face. Poor guy got turned all market-safe and sweet. The rest of the effects must have been an afterthought. The space battles and landscapes are all just generic CG crap, and it’s neither convincing nor interesting to look at. Even the alien designs are awful. Taking a page from the original run of Star Trek, the makeup team just slapped body paint and forehead prostheses on the actors and called it a day. Seriously, Karen Gillian looks like a cosplayer and less like a character in a big-budget blockbuster movie.
The story is crap, too. I’m sick of every superhero movie feeling the need to be an origin story for the first film. It leads to the same narrative structures and tropes and I can’t stand it anymore. Why not go the route of the original Batman or X-Men and only show origin stories in flashbacks, if at all? Plus the whole “Star-Lord’s mom died” thing has almost no payoff and only serves as a cheap way to make you sympathize with his wooden plank of a character. Michael Rooker’s character was equally pointless and annoying, too. The villains are rushed to make room for the “getting the team together” crap, which is a shame because Ronan the Accuser and Nebula seemed like interesting villains. It feels like their whole purpose was to introduce Thanos for Avengers 3. Thanos is definitely a highlight of the film, but I’d rather have more of the other villains. Stick to your own movie, Thanos.
Overall, this is a dull mess of a movie. The characters are shambling unfunny husks of their comic book counterparts, and there’s nothing fun to look at to distract you. Rocket Raccoon is awesome, but the little fuzzball is hardly enough to carry the film. It’s not particularly funny either. The jokes are few and far between and the ones that are actually funny are even fewer. The Avengers was more of a comedy than this crap. I’m shocked Marvel screwed this up so badly. Heck, even the soundtrack sucks. If you like out of place 70’s soft rock, then go buy yourself a ticket. Otherwise, skip this piece of interstellar debris and watch something else. After this, I’d rather see a Howard the Duck reboot than a GotG sequel.
November 3, 2015
Movie Review: Mimic
Originally written May 24th, 2014.
Mimic is a long-forgotten horror movie from director Guillermo del Toro. While not his finest work, it’s still a decent creature feature. The premise might seem silly to some, but if you can look past some of the goofy Hollywood science, it’s a fun watch.
The movie follows an entomologist who engineered a species of super-bug to kill off disease-carrying cockroaches. Cut to a few years later and somehow the bugs have mutated rapidly into giant carnivorous monsters. After a series of disappearances the scientist and her husband suspect that her mutant bugs may be the culprit.
Despite the silly premise and the typical monster movie execution, Mimic is a very creepy film. The movie takes itself seriously, and puts genuine effort into making the idea of giant bugs seem plausible. The buildup to the monster reveal is very effective and unsettling. The bugs have adapted to disguise themselves as a human-like figure, and we only see glimpses of them in this form for most of the movie.
The bugs make this gross clicking noise when they near their victims, and that’s mostly what we hear the entire movie instead of actually seeing the monsters. Surprisingly using only sound effects to represent the monsters works great. It’s reminiscent of the sounds the monsters in Silent Hill make as they shamble around in the darkness. In a really cool touch, the movie’s sound effects are full of various clicking noises, as if the bugs are hiding everywhere.
The main problem with the movie is the ending. It’s anticlimactic and stuck with a studio-enforced happy ending. The whole movie seems to be building up to a climactic battle with the queen bug, or at least a really large boss-battle bug, but all we get is a slightly large male that’s defeated in less than a minute. The whole ending feels very rushed, and it’s a shame because the rest of the movie is really fun and it’s a shame to see it wrapped up in such a lackluster fashion. Apparently there’s a director’s cut of the film available, but I only saw the theatrical version. The director’s cut has the originally intended ending that was more pessimistic. (It doesn’t do anything to fix the anticlimax, though) If you decide to watch the movie, I’d try to hunt down a copy of the director’s cut.
Overall, Mimic is an entertaining monster movie. There are tons of “Giant ____ attack” movies, but this is one of the better entries in the genre. It’s silly and full of the usual monster movie cliches, but it has a creepy charm that sets it apart from its peers. It’s nothing highbrow, but it’s a fun popcorn flick. It’s definitely worth checking out if you like sci-fi or monsters.
Mimic is a long-forgotten horror movie from director Guillermo del Toro. While not his finest work, it’s still a decent creature feature. The premise might seem silly to some, but if you can look past some of the goofy Hollywood science, it’s a fun watch.
The movie follows an entomologist who engineered a species of super-bug to kill off disease-carrying cockroaches. Cut to a few years later and somehow the bugs have mutated rapidly into giant carnivorous monsters. After a series of disappearances the scientist and her husband suspect that her mutant bugs may be the culprit.
Despite the silly premise and the typical monster movie execution, Mimic is a very creepy film. The movie takes itself seriously, and puts genuine effort into making the idea of giant bugs seem plausible. The buildup to the monster reveal is very effective and unsettling. The bugs have adapted to disguise themselves as a human-like figure, and we only see glimpses of them in this form for most of the movie.
The bugs make this gross clicking noise when they near their victims, and that’s mostly what we hear the entire movie instead of actually seeing the monsters. Surprisingly using only sound effects to represent the monsters works great. It’s reminiscent of the sounds the monsters in Silent Hill make as they shamble around in the darkness. In a really cool touch, the movie’s sound effects are full of various clicking noises, as if the bugs are hiding everywhere.
The main problem with the movie is the ending. It’s anticlimactic and stuck with a studio-enforced happy ending. The whole movie seems to be building up to a climactic battle with the queen bug, or at least a really large boss-battle bug, but all we get is a slightly large male that’s defeated in less than a minute. The whole ending feels very rushed, and it’s a shame because the rest of the movie is really fun and it’s a shame to see it wrapped up in such a lackluster fashion. Apparently there’s a director’s cut of the film available, but I only saw the theatrical version. The director’s cut has the originally intended ending that was more pessimistic. (It doesn’t do anything to fix the anticlimax, though) If you decide to watch the movie, I’d try to hunt down a copy of the director’s cut.
Overall, Mimic is an entertaining monster movie. There are tons of “Giant ____ attack” movies, but this is one of the better entries in the genre. It’s silly and full of the usual monster movie cliches, but it has a creepy charm that sets it apart from its peers. It’s nothing highbrow, but it’s a fun popcorn flick. It’s definitely worth checking out if you like sci-fi or monsters.
Movie Review: Lifeforce
Originally written May 31st, 2014.
Lifeforce is freakin’ weird, man. No other way to put it. It’s just flat-out strange. Whether or not you enjoy this movie will likely be based on how high your suspension of disbelief is. Many will be turned off by a movie with space-vampires. The remaining few who stay are in for a treat.
For starters, the movie is based on a science-fiction novel called The Space Vampires. That’s the most amazingly stupid title for a book since the days of pulp fiction. Then there’s Alien scribe Dan O’Bannon writing the adaptation. The guy has a history of taking far-fetched and weird ideas and turning them into enjoyab, and Lifeforce is no exception. The movie is tightly paced and full of suspense and intrigue the whole way through. While the film’s content is more akin to a horror movie, the script runs like a great thriller, and it’s never a bore.
So what’s the movie even about? It’s quite a doozy. A NASA mission to scan Halley’s Comet discovers a strange spacecraft in the rock’s orbit. The astronauts go to investigate and find a trio of humanoids encased in pieces of the Fortress of Solitude. The astronaut find themselves compelled to bring the specimens aboard the ship, and that’s the last we see of them. When the ship returns to Earth’s orbit full of dead astronauts, their fellow scientists decide to get the bottom of things.
They bring the alien specimens in for examination, but one of the aliens escapes. The scientists realize that the creatures feed off of human souls, literally draining them of life. As the scientists tail the escaped alien, they realize that she has the ability to drain small portions of vitality, so that the alien can hop between the consciousnesses of people. Then for reasons barely explained, the partly-drained victims become zombie-like creatures, and the plague spreads like wildfire throughout London. This somehow sends soul-energy to the alien spaceship, which is now orbiting Earth. The scientists ultimately catch up to the alien, and the lone survivor of the NASA mission (who escaped in a handy-dandy escape pod) sacrifices himself to kill her. This apparently stops the flow of soul-energy and sucks the scientist and the alien up into the unknown. And that’s it. Freakin’ weird, man.
If that summary didn’t seem too weird for you, I highly recommend getting a hold of this movie. The scenes in space are stunning, especially considering the movie came out in 1985. The designs for the alien spaceship are gorgeous, and the movie has an overall fantastic look to it. Tobe Hooper, director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist helms this flick, and he has always had an eye for cinematography.
Even if the movie is a bit loopy, there are still plenty of tense moments. The survivor of the NASA mission formed a psychic link with the female alien and finds himself inescapably drawn to her. His struggle to resist the mind control is constantly tense and played with great subtlety. There’s also a fantastically creepy scene where we see what happens when the vampire drains her victim completely, and what happens when the victim tries to restore itself. The practical effects in that scene are horrifyingly grotesque, and really convey the sheer deadliness of the vampires.
Overall, this is a great sci-fi flick. There’s a smorgasbord of horror elements thrown in even if they don’t make sense, and that’s part of the fun. It’s a crazy and inventive take on the vampire mythos, and it never has a dull moment. If you have a high tolerance for weird stuff, this is certainly worth a watch.
Lifeforce is freakin’ weird, man. No other way to put it. It’s just flat-out strange. Whether or not you enjoy this movie will likely be based on how high your suspension of disbelief is. Many will be turned off by a movie with space-vampires. The remaining few who stay are in for a treat.
For starters, the movie is based on a science-fiction novel called The Space Vampires. That’s the most amazingly stupid title for a book since the days of pulp fiction. Then there’s Alien scribe Dan O’Bannon writing the adaptation. The guy has a history of taking far-fetched and weird ideas and turning them into enjoyab, and Lifeforce is no exception. The movie is tightly paced and full of suspense and intrigue the whole way through. While the film’s content is more akin to a horror movie, the script runs like a great thriller, and it’s never a bore.
So what’s the movie even about? It’s quite a doozy. A NASA mission to scan Halley’s Comet discovers a strange spacecraft in the rock’s orbit. The astronauts go to investigate and find a trio of humanoids encased in pieces of the Fortress of Solitude. The astronaut find themselves compelled to bring the specimens aboard the ship, and that’s the last we see of them. When the ship returns to Earth’s orbit full of dead astronauts, their fellow scientists decide to get the bottom of things.
They bring the alien specimens in for examination, but one of the aliens escapes. The scientists realize that the creatures feed off of human souls, literally draining them of life. As the scientists tail the escaped alien, they realize that she has the ability to drain small portions of vitality, so that the alien can hop between the consciousnesses of people. Then for reasons barely explained, the partly-drained victims become zombie-like creatures, and the plague spreads like wildfire throughout London. This somehow sends soul-energy to the alien spaceship, which is now orbiting Earth. The scientists ultimately catch up to the alien, and the lone survivor of the NASA mission (who escaped in a handy-dandy escape pod) sacrifices himself to kill her. This apparently stops the flow of soul-energy and sucks the scientist and the alien up into the unknown. And that’s it. Freakin’ weird, man.
If that summary didn’t seem too weird for you, I highly recommend getting a hold of this movie. The scenes in space are stunning, especially considering the movie came out in 1985. The designs for the alien spaceship are gorgeous, and the movie has an overall fantastic look to it. Tobe Hooper, director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist helms this flick, and he has always had an eye for cinematography.
Even if the movie is a bit loopy, there are still plenty of tense moments. The survivor of the NASA mission formed a psychic link with the female alien and finds himself inescapably drawn to her. His struggle to resist the mind control is constantly tense and played with great subtlety. There’s also a fantastically creepy scene where we see what happens when the vampire drains her victim completely, and what happens when the victim tries to restore itself. The practical effects in that scene are horrifyingly grotesque, and really convey the sheer deadliness of the vampires.
Overall, this is a great sci-fi flick. There’s a smorgasbord of horror elements thrown in even if they don’t make sense, and that’s part of the fun. It’s a crazy and inventive take on the vampire mythos, and it never has a dull moment. If you have a high tolerance for weird stuff, this is certainly worth a watch.
Movie Review: Wishmaster
Originally written June 14th, 2014.
Wishmaster is a 1997 monster movie from FX wizard Robert Kurtzman. It’s been largely forgotten since its release, and it’s pretty much been universally panned. I’d hardly call that fair. It’s a terrible movie if viewed as a generic monster movie, but if you have the right mindset it’s a fun movie. It’s nowhere near perfect, but it is fun.
The movie is basically a 90 minute parade of special effects. If that sounds appealing to you, Wishmaster will deliver. This is purely Robert Kurtzman’s vanity project. Any notion of sense or logic is thrown out the window in favor of rubbery monsters and gore. The acting is beyond awful; the cast is nothing but goofy cameos and a few soap opera actors. The dialog is hilariously terrible and the plot is mind-bogglingly stupid. The negative reviews are completely valid, but I’m surprised there’s no cult following for this so-bad-it’s-good pile of weird.
Right off the bat we’re thrust into an orgy of makeup effects. The movie opens in 12th century Persia where the titular Wishmaster, a demonic djinn, is putting curses on the townsfolk, turning people into trees, snake-men, and making people's skeletons jump out of their skin and run around. This all happens suddenly with barely any explanation, and it’s hilarious. Not to mention, the effects look absolutely fantastic. This may be a stupid movie, but Kurtzman really knows his stuff. The king of Persia realizes his mistake in unleashing the djinn and imprisons him in a large ruby.
According to the movie’s logic, genies are trapped between the spiritual realm and the earth, and granting 3 wishes for their master will free them and allow them to take over the world. They also have the odd compulsion to grant a wish for anyone they meet. All the wishes are goofy “be careful what you wish for” twists. The twists are so stupid and predictable you can’t help but laugh.
Cut to the 20th century, and Robert Englund is overseeing a statue being unloaded off of a cargo ship. His assistant, played by Ted Raimi, is promptly squished by the statue when the crane unloading it short circuits. This is the first in a series of pointless but hilariously hammy cameos from horror veterans. It’s clear that none of the horror vets were taking their roles seriously, because every single one of them is played as over-the-top as possible.
The genie-ruby falls out of the statue and eventually winds up in the hands of a jeweler named Alexandra. The jeweler somehow awakens the djinn and becomes his master. The genie then breaks free from his prison and proceeds to go around killing people. This takes up a majority of the movie until Alexandra realizes that she can just wish the genie away by wishing that the statue never broke and released him. The end. A no-frills straightforward plot.
The best part obviously is all the special effects. The djinn makes a deal with a hammy hobo and kills another cameo character, that ice cream man from Phantasm. He then goes and steals a cadaver’s face which somehow allows him to disguise himself as a human and stay within the budget. It’s a shame that he spends most of the movie as a human, because the makeup and costume for the monster is great. He looks like a weird cross between the Green Goblin and a Power Rangers villain.
If I’m being honest, there’s not really much more to the movie. It’s just the genie going around and killing people in hilariously stupid wish scenarios. As I said, all complaints about this movie are valid. The effects are fantastic throughout, except for some horrendous 90’s CG. If you like stupid monster movies and haven’t heard of this one before, I’d say give it a go. If you like your movies to have a bit more brain to them, I’d skip it. Take it for what it’s worth, a shameless excuse for Robert Kurtzman to show off his special effects skills.
Wishmaster is a 1997 monster movie from FX wizard Robert Kurtzman. It’s been largely forgotten since its release, and it’s pretty much been universally panned. I’d hardly call that fair. It’s a terrible movie if viewed as a generic monster movie, but if you have the right mindset it’s a fun movie. It’s nowhere near perfect, but it is fun.
The movie is basically a 90 minute parade of special effects. If that sounds appealing to you, Wishmaster will deliver. This is purely Robert Kurtzman’s vanity project. Any notion of sense or logic is thrown out the window in favor of rubbery monsters and gore. The acting is beyond awful; the cast is nothing but goofy cameos and a few soap opera actors. The dialog is hilariously terrible and the plot is mind-bogglingly stupid. The negative reviews are completely valid, but I’m surprised there’s no cult following for this so-bad-it’s-good pile of weird.
Right off the bat we’re thrust into an orgy of makeup effects. The movie opens in 12th century Persia where the titular Wishmaster, a demonic djinn, is putting curses on the townsfolk, turning people into trees, snake-men, and making people's skeletons jump out of their skin and run around. This all happens suddenly with barely any explanation, and it’s hilarious. Not to mention, the effects look absolutely fantastic. This may be a stupid movie, but Kurtzman really knows his stuff. The king of Persia realizes his mistake in unleashing the djinn and imprisons him in a large ruby.
According to the movie’s logic, genies are trapped between the spiritual realm and the earth, and granting 3 wishes for their master will free them and allow them to take over the world. They also have the odd compulsion to grant a wish for anyone they meet. All the wishes are goofy “be careful what you wish for” twists. The twists are so stupid and predictable you can’t help but laugh.
Cut to the 20th century, and Robert Englund is overseeing a statue being unloaded off of a cargo ship. His assistant, played by Ted Raimi, is promptly squished by the statue when the crane unloading it short circuits. This is the first in a series of pointless but hilariously hammy cameos from horror veterans. It’s clear that none of the horror vets were taking their roles seriously, because every single one of them is played as over-the-top as possible.
The genie-ruby falls out of the statue and eventually winds up in the hands of a jeweler named Alexandra. The jeweler somehow awakens the djinn and becomes his master. The genie then breaks free from his prison and proceeds to go around killing people. This takes up a majority of the movie until Alexandra realizes that she can just wish the genie away by wishing that the statue never broke and released him. The end. A no-frills straightforward plot.
The best part obviously is all the special effects. The djinn makes a deal with a hammy hobo and kills another cameo character, that ice cream man from Phantasm. He then goes and steals a cadaver’s face which somehow allows him to disguise himself as a human and stay within the budget. It’s a shame that he spends most of the movie as a human, because the makeup and costume for the monster is great. He looks like a weird cross between the Green Goblin and a Power Rangers villain.
If I’m being honest, there’s not really much more to the movie. It’s just the genie going around and killing people in hilariously stupid wish scenarios. As I said, all complaints about this movie are valid. The effects are fantastic throughout, except for some horrendous 90’s CG. If you like stupid monster movies and haven’t heard of this one before, I’d say give it a go. If you like your movies to have a bit more brain to them, I’d skip it. Take it for what it’s worth, a shameless excuse for Robert Kurtzman to show off his special effects skills.
Movie Review: Candyman
Originally written June 18th, 2014.
I’m not a big fan of Clive Barker as an author, but I was pleasantly surprised by Candyman. It does a great job of expanding a short story into a feature-length screenplay, and generally outdoes its source material. It’s eerie and chilling movie from beginning to end. In a decade largely devoid of good horror movies, Candyman stands head and shoulders above its peers as one of the creepiest flicks of the 90s.
One of the film’s strongest suits is its production value. The movie looks fantastic, with many scenes shot on location in the Cabrini-Green projects. Poor housing projects are dreary and unsettling enough to begin with, and putting a boogeyman in there just ramps up those feelings. Plus there’s a lot of eye-catching imagery in the colorful graffiti that forms most of the film’s backgrounds. That shot of the giant Candyman mural is both visually stunning and disturbing at the same time, and has stuck with me for quite some time.
The acting is some of the best I’ve seen in a horror movie. Horror movies are almost always chockfull of bad acting, and the memorable performances are usually from over-the-top character actors. Memorable and fun, certainly, but not high quality stuff. That’s not the case with Candyman. Virginia Madsen definitely deserved her Saturn award that year. (She plays the “is it all in her head” bit perfectly.) Tony Todd’s role as the titular Candyman is probably the creepiest horror performance of the 90s. He is just fantastic. From his deep gravelly voice, to his creepy placid demeanor, the guy just knocks it out of the park.
The score is excellent, too. Avant-garde composer Philip Glass penned the score for the film, and he did an amazing job. The music has a spooky music box feel to it. The score is mostly ethereal piano loops with choir vocals thrown in here and there, and it’s creepy as heck. The main piece played throughout, Helen’s Theme, is reminiscent of Promise (Reprise) from Silent Hill 2. If you like that song, it’s worth looking up the Candyman soundtrack, it’s a really cool track.
As a standalone movie, Candyman is excellent. But how does it stand up against the source material? The movie is based on the Clive Barker short story, The Forbidden. It follows roughly the same plot as the story; a woman named Helen discovers the urban legend of the Candyman and faces the deadly consequences of her continued investigation. Overall the movie does a better job of telling the story than the story, but there are a few key differences that bothered me.
For one, they give the Candyman a backstory that does everything except explain why he only shows up when you say his name five times in front of a mirror. It seems kind of arbitrary for him to use that as his main method of transportation when they clearly show he can appear wherever he darn well pleases. As a means of drawing out the runtime, the writers threw in a “was it all in her head” element. Virginia Madsen plays this device really well, but if you’ve read the story then you know it’s not in her head after all. Thirdly the filmmakers felt compelled to “kill off” the Candyman in this version. The ending for the movie is definitely better than the Wicker Man ripoff the story has, but they could have kept the Candyman alive without it affecting the ending at all. Plus it makes no sense how they even killed him in the first place. (A flaming piece of debris? Really?)
Overall, Candyman is a knockout piece of horror cinema. It takes its time, builds up its atmosphere, and then hits you with creepy bee-infested ghosts. It’s a fantastic horror movie and definitely worth watching. I highly recommend it.
I’m not a big fan of Clive Barker as an author, but I was pleasantly surprised by Candyman. It does a great job of expanding a short story into a feature-length screenplay, and generally outdoes its source material. It’s eerie and chilling movie from beginning to end. In a decade largely devoid of good horror movies, Candyman stands head and shoulders above its peers as one of the creepiest flicks of the 90s.
One of the film’s strongest suits is its production value. The movie looks fantastic, with many scenes shot on location in the Cabrini-Green projects. Poor housing projects are dreary and unsettling enough to begin with, and putting a boogeyman in there just ramps up those feelings. Plus there’s a lot of eye-catching imagery in the colorful graffiti that forms most of the film’s backgrounds. That shot of the giant Candyman mural is both visually stunning and disturbing at the same time, and has stuck with me for quite some time.
The acting is some of the best I’ve seen in a horror movie. Horror movies are almost always chockfull of bad acting, and the memorable performances are usually from over-the-top character actors. Memorable and fun, certainly, but not high quality stuff. That’s not the case with Candyman. Virginia Madsen definitely deserved her Saturn award that year. (She plays the “is it all in her head” bit perfectly.) Tony Todd’s role as the titular Candyman is probably the creepiest horror performance of the 90s. He is just fantastic. From his deep gravelly voice, to his creepy placid demeanor, the guy just knocks it out of the park.
The score is excellent, too. Avant-garde composer Philip Glass penned the score for the film, and he did an amazing job. The music has a spooky music box feel to it. The score is mostly ethereal piano loops with choir vocals thrown in here and there, and it’s creepy as heck. The main piece played throughout, Helen’s Theme, is reminiscent of Promise (Reprise) from Silent Hill 2. If you like that song, it’s worth looking up the Candyman soundtrack, it’s a really cool track.
As a standalone movie, Candyman is excellent. But how does it stand up against the source material? The movie is based on the Clive Barker short story, The Forbidden. It follows roughly the same plot as the story; a woman named Helen discovers the urban legend of the Candyman and faces the deadly consequences of her continued investigation. Overall the movie does a better job of telling the story than the story, but there are a few key differences that bothered me.
For one, they give the Candyman a backstory that does everything except explain why he only shows up when you say his name five times in front of a mirror. It seems kind of arbitrary for him to use that as his main method of transportation when they clearly show he can appear wherever he darn well pleases. As a means of drawing out the runtime, the writers threw in a “was it all in her head” element. Virginia Madsen plays this device really well, but if you’ve read the story then you know it’s not in her head after all. Thirdly the filmmakers felt compelled to “kill off” the Candyman in this version. The ending for the movie is definitely better than the Wicker Man ripoff the story has, but they could have kept the Candyman alive without it affecting the ending at all. Plus it makes no sense how they even killed him in the first place. (A flaming piece of debris? Really?)
Overall, Candyman is a knockout piece of horror cinema. It takes its time, builds up its atmosphere, and then hits you with creepy bee-infested ghosts. It’s a fantastic horror movie and definitely worth watching. I highly recommend it.
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