Candyman: Day of the Dead

An awful, pointless sequel, Candyman: Day of the Dead follows Donna D’Errico’s Caroline McKeever as she’s forced to confront her family’s tragic past after awakening Tony Todd’s malevolent title figure. Filmmaker Turi Meyer, working from a script written with Al Septién, kicks Candyman: Day of the Dead off with a hopelessly underwhelming (and palpably chintzy) dream sequence that immediately sets a tone of aggressive incompetence, with the picture, beyond that point, progressing into a sluggish, uninvolving midsection that boasts few, if any, attributes designed to capture the viewer’s interest. It’s clear, certainly, that the arms-length atmosphere is exacerbated by D’Errico’s flat and completely unconvincing turn as the bland central character, and there’s little doubt, as well, that Todd’s predictably menacing turn as Candyman is severely diminished by Meyer and Septién’s less-than-innovative approach to the downright iconic figure (ie Todd is saddled with dialogue that seems to have been lifted verbatim from earlier installments). The movie’s lackluster vibe extends even to seemingly foolproof scenes of over-the-top violence (eg the most obvious and infuriating example of this is a key massacre sequence wherein all the bloodshed occurs off-screen), which, when coupled with an endless and predictably ineffective climax, cements Candyman: Day of the Dead‘s place as a bottom-of-the-barrel followup that makes the mediocre original film look like a masterpiece by comparison.

1/2* out of ****

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