Candyman

Nia DaCosta's Candyman is a rare legacy sequel that deepens the original's mythology while making a sharper political statement. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays a visual artist in gentrified Cabrini-Green who becomes obsessed with the Candyman legend and finds himself physically transforming into a new iteration of the myth. The shadow-puppet sequences are visually stunning. DaCosta and co-writer Jordan Peele reframe Candyman not as a curse but as a response to systemic violence against Black Americans — a boogeyman created by injustice. The mirror kills are inventively staged, and Colman Domingo is magnetic as the keeper of the legend.