Four years ago, legacy sequel Candyman 2021 showed how to bring back a cult horror series with style. The Candyman movie franchise may not have been as popular as A Nightmare on Elm Street or other slashers in its day, but it still stuck with a generation of horror fans.

The Clive Barker-created series focused on Tony Todd’s тιтle slasher, a former artist who was brutally murdered for an interracial love affair. In the modern day, anybody who calls Candyman’s name into a mirror five times will meet the end of his hook.

After the original series petered out with the weak third entry, Day of the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, it took over 20 years for Candyman to return. Instead of being some thoughtless slasher mining nostalgia for the original, the Nia DaCosta-directed legacy sequel added new elements to the lore.

It’s almost hard to recall how much excitement there was for the movie back in 2021. The hype machine had done a great job building it up – though the poster leaned a little too hard on promoting producer Jordan Peele’s name over DeCosta – and given the racial tensions of that period, the timing for a new Candyman just felt right.

Candyman 2021 Lived Up To The Original Movie, But With A Fresh Twist

Candyman 2021 cast Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Anthony, an artist with a personal link to the events of the 1992 original. Instead of Tony Todd’s Daniel Robitaille being the main threat, the sequel posits that over decades, the spirits of murdered African Americans have formed a Candyman hive.

This was a fascinating new wrinkle to the canon that also offered disturbing commentary on race relations in America in the present day. While most horror legacy sequels are content to dust off familiar elements and sprinkle some cameos from the original cast, Candyman 2021 brought the concept right into the 21st Century.

It could be argued the issue with Candyman is that it has too many ideas, and its short 91-minute runtime doesn’t allow them all time to breathe. There was even a major subplot involving the spirit of the original movie’s protagonist Helen (Virginia Madsen) coming back as a vengeful spirit that was trimmed from the final product.

Dropping various subplots made the movie’s pacing a little uneven, though that’s all forgivable. DeCosta injects Candyman 2021 with a great deal of style too, and gets inventive with her camerawork throughout. Instead of coming across as style over substance, this feels in line with the sequel’s dread-soaked mood.

The 2021 Candyman Sequel Still Entertains 4 Years Later

Candyman 2021 received 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, but its reception with audiences feels more mixed. Again, it crams a lot into a тιԍнт runtime, and is the rare instance where a horror sequel could have benefited from an extra 10 to 15 minutes of runtime.

For all the weighty themes it explores, Candyman 2021 is still a gory slasher at its core. DeCosta knows how to stage a setpiece, from a luckless art critic being stalked in her apartment to a gang of dumb teenagers who decide that raising Candyman in their school bathroom is a great idea.

The film is bolstered by a terrific cast too, from Yahya Abdul-Mateen II to Colman Domingo and a legacy appearance by the great Vanessa Williams. It would have been nice for the late, great Tony Todd to have gotten more to do with his final appearance as Candyman, but his shock cameo adds a perfect ʙuттon to the story.

With Peele producing and the film being backed by a fantastic marketing campaign, it feels like audiences expected Candyman 2021 to be an instant classic. Instead, it is an ambitious, slightly over-stuffed sequel that still has a lot of great things about it.

Candyman Is A Great Blueprint For How To Execute A Legacy Sequel In Horror

Candyman 2021 arrived during a legacy sequel boom in the horror genre. Halloween 2018 was a smash hit that led to two sequels, and then Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Scream 2022 and The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep followed in quick succession.

In 2025 alone, there’s also Final Destination Bloodlines and the new I Know What You Did Last Summer. Canydman kind of got lost in that legacy sequel gold rush, despite earning over three times its production budget with $77 million (via Box Office Mojo). Even so, it’s also the legacy sequel that was the most daring.

It could have delivered on Todd’s Candyman splitting people open like previous sequels did, but it tried something more intriguing. It looked at the original’s premise and decided there was more meat on that bone. Those coming for hook-handed mayhem will still leave satisfied with the 2021 sequel, but it wants audiences to think about it afterwards.

Candyman 2021 has yet to receive a follow-up, and at this point, probably won’t. That’s fine too, since the implications of its final scene are almost more interesting to mull over than to actually see it onscreen.

If Candyman ever returns, it will likely be in the form of another soft reboot. Hopefully, it won’t be another 20-plus years for devotees of the slasher to see him return, though for those who were left disappointed with the 2021 follow-up, I’d strongly recommend giving it another chance.

Source: Rotten Tomatoes, Box Office Mojo