Here's a little background on me. I've always been excited for Christmas. It is the one day all year I will wake up at an ungodly hour without setting an alarm because, apparently, I am seven years old. When I was old enough for my parents to yell at when I woke them up at 4:30AM on Christmas morning, I had a choice to make. I could either be an adult and sleep in until a reasonable hour, or I could find something to keep me occupied until dawn. And so I began my tradition of watching movies in the pre-dawn hours of Christmas morning. The first entry in this series was The Crow. I was unfortunate enough to be a teenager when The Crow came out, which means that I have seen no fewer than 6000 people dressed up as The Crow for Halloween. This movie has always had a weird appeal. There are all sorts of people who will dress up as The Crow for Halloween: dudes who like action movies, guys who want an excuse to show off their abs, Goth kids, poor people who happen to own a black shirt and black jeans, bondage enthusiasts, people who love to pout, etc.
Yeah, like that, but less awesome. And with more practical pants.
Anyway, back to Christmas. I was lucky enough to have very permissive parents who realized that I was not going to kill people because of the music, video games, or movies I absorbed. However, my mom happened to walk into the room as the climactic scene was finishing and she saw this:
Bizarrely, her reaction was not "That's totally bitchin', son!"
Yes, a guy impaled on a gargoyle, which is funneling his blood out of its mouth. Merry Christmas. I hadn't watched The Crow in many years, so I was wondering how well it held up. The answer? About as well as can be expected.
The Crow is the story of Eric Draven (Brandon Lee). Eric and his fiancé, Shelly, were brutally murdered on October 30th, the day before their wedding. Why? Because October 30th is Devil's Night in Detroit, and Detroit is run by complete scumbags (NOTE: that probably means that The Crow takes place before Robocop and is, therefore, a prequel). A year later, Eric crawls out of his grave because...um...magic? For whatever reason, a crow tapped on his grave and Eric woke up. Not surprisingly, he was traumatized by memories of his death and the rape and murder of his soon-to-be-wife. Quite a bit more surprising, though, was Eric's new-found ability to heal from any wound --- oh, and the fact that his body apparently healed from the sharp fall that killed him while he was rotting in the grave. Like anyone else who has risen from the dead, Eric preached to others decided to share his experience with the people who killed him. And by "share his experience," I of course mean "murder the hell out of." But before he can wreak his terrible vengeance, he needs to put on makeup. To...er...protect his identity...or something.
That's a sad clown
Once he put on his face, Eric --- now The Crow --- hunted down each of the men responsible for his and Shelly's deaths. As he works his way up the criminal food chain, The Crow's murderous ways have an unexpected effect on a young girl and a disillusioned cop; he gives them hope...which probably means they're pretty messed up in the head.
The Crow was undoubtedly Brandon Lee's best movie before his untimely death during filming. However, his career up to this point was highlighted by his prominent chin and that time he complimented Dolph Lundgren's penis in Showdown in Little Tokyo. Was Lee any good? He turns in a solid action performance, but his acting is hit and miss. He is suitably cool when playing the invulnerable Crow, but is wretched when trying to convey any emotions; when he is moaning for Shelly, Lee sounded like a drunk with a mouth full of marbles. What really makes The Crow work is not Brandon Lee, but the surprisingly solid supporting cast of villains. Michael Wincott played the unfortunately named Top Dollar, the lead baddie, and he was a lot of fun to watch. Wincott has a fantastic villain voice, and it absolutely fits the ridiculous level of evil this character requires.
Long hair and no tie? This Top Dollar fellow is quite the rebel!
His right hand man was none other than Tony Todd, who simply is incapable of playing a nice guy. You know you've got a solid bad guy cast when the Candyman is a henchman. There are a few other minor bad guys, but the most important one is David Patrick Kelly, who managed to rock a Caesar cut and a ponytail at the same time. Kelly is one of my all-time favorite baddies, and he has some choice moments here. My favorite is when he orders an underling to grab some cigarettes and "road beers" because he's so evil that he makes drunk driving a priority. A close second is his "Fire it up!" chant with his gang members. It is totally intimidating and not at all comedic.
And it definitely doesn't look like a terrible Boy Band dance
The last of the noteworthy baddies is Bai Ling, who was suitably creepy as a weird witch-like lady. She didn't act great, but Ling's natural smile looks genuinely frightening, so she came across pretty well in her small role. Ernie Hudson got to swear and point out how ridiculous the rest of the cast was acting. Rochelle Davis played little Sarah, and she was pretty bad. On the plus side, she had a terrible and very 1990s haircut that you don't see too often in films. This was also in that brief period where Anna Levine got to play almost every trashy whore character that Juliette Lewis turned down. Levine has a tragic quality to her, and I thought she was surprisingly good in a role that wasn't very well-written.
The Crow was directed by Alex Proyas, and was his first widely-released film. If absolutely nothing else, he took a story that could have been laughably cheesy and added enough edge to it to make it pretty cool. Proyas wasn't too impressive from a technical standpoint, but he played it pretty smart. Why mess with fancy angles or try to milk a great dramatic performance from this cast, when it is far easier to go for spectacle and overlook its inherent stupidity? My favorite instance of that comes from this scene:
Heroes/antiheroes leaving a calling card is a long-honored comic book tradition, so it's not shocking that The Crow decides to let the police know that he is the one, um, murdering scumbags. The effect that this scene has on Ernie Hudson's character is to make him roll with it; if a victim wants to kill the city's biggest scumbags that the law can't seem to prosecute, he's willing to light a cigarette and enjoy the show. But think about this scene for a moment. This isn't Spider-Man leaving a purse snatcher somewhere for a beat cop to find and arrest. This is someone who is murdering people who, in a strictly legal point of view, are innocent. From that perspective, The Crow is a lot closer to a serial killer than a hero.
"Ha! Logic!"
Of course, nobody watching the movie actually comes to that conclusion but me. And no, I don't really give a rat's ass that the bad guys are being killed. That's all good clean fun in my mind. What I would like to know is how The Crow managed to pour the gasoline so precisely to make his flame art. The city always looks wet, he operates at night, and I don't see any streetlights in the area. Is that a superpower from beyond the grave? Sure, why not?
Most of the time, movies with antiheroes rely on the main character to draw the audience in. What's the difference between the murderous Punisher (1989) and the murderous Punisher (2004)? Thomas Jane is actually sympathetic and Dolph Lundgren deserves everything he gets because he's a godless Communist (that is a continuation of the Ivan Drago story, right?). The Crow doesn't work that way. Brandon Lee is just too much of a ham to be truly appealing. What makes his work look good is how evil the bad guys are by comparison. When your villains are crazy bastards who live to rape and murder, you don't really need an awesome hero, as long as the bad guys pay.
Although, let's be honest. How long were these jerks going to live, anyway?
That's really what separates The Crow from the rest of its comic book movie ilk. This is a whole lot less about the protagonist avenging a single crime and more about the need for bad people to die horribly. And that's okay. This is a ridiculous story that gets juuust the right amount of edgy attitude without going overboard, and The Crow winds up being a lot of fun to watch. That is a delicate balance, though, so it isn't terribly surprising that the sequels didn't quite hit the mark.
"If you mention the sequels again, I will stab your face in!"
So, yeah. The Crow is not a legitimately great movie, even with action movie standards. It is, however, a unique blend of violence, melodrama, and villainy that somehow manages to take itself seriously. That is what makes this movie work; if the characters were winking at the camera or camping it up, The Crow would be unbearable to watch. And yet...it's actually still pretty cool.
The Crow soundtrack was also a pretty good sampling of moody, mid-90s "alternative" rock. Nine Inch Nails and Stone Temple Pilots got most of the attention with their contributions, but my favorite track also happens to be the unofficial theme song to the film.
As a fan of the slasher sub-genre, I tend to like creative movie deaths. If the villain can kill with style and humor, I am 100% on board. You would think, then, that I would appreciate the Final Destination series, since all they are is a collection of death scenes. I don't know why, but I've always been bored with this franchise. Maybe it's the inevitability of death, or maybe it's the hackneyed writing and formulaic plots, but it has been almost a decade since I last saw a movie in this series. I just never felt like wasting my time, which is especially harsh, considering some of the crap I watch. I decided to give Final Destination 5 a try for one reason and one reason only:
That's the first major scene in the movie, and it has a lot going for it. There is a group of friends in a terrible, life-or-death-but-mainly-death situation, and they all manage to find different and creative ways to die. The CGI looked pretty good and Daivd Koechner has his skin boiled off by hot tar. What's not to like? More importantly, what else does FD5 have in store?
Final Destination 5 begins with a group of office workers getting on a bus so they can go to a company retreat. While on the bridge, Sam (Nicholas D'Agosto) has a daydream of the bridge collapsing and everybody but his ex-girlfriend, Molly (Emma Bell), dying in hilarious terrifying fashion.
Off-camera CGI guy: "Rawr! I'm an evil bridge! And, um, I'm membering and dismembering your friends!"
When Sam snaps out of it, he sees signs that his daydream is about to become reality. Naturally, he tries to save everyone's life by demanding that they leave the bus and start running against traffic on the bridge. Oddly enough, his tactics work; in a bizarre coincidence, all eight characters that have had speaking parts up to this moment miraculously choose to get off the bus right before the bridge starts collapsing, which sends their bus (and non-speaking role co-workers) to the briny depths. At the memorial service, the survivors decide to be ungrateful little punks and spend their time not enjoying their new lease on life or celebrating; they just want to know how Sam knew to get off the bus, and they want to be sure that their questions all sound accusatory.
"So let me get this straight...none of you wants to buy me a shot for saving your life?"
Of course, Sam could have had a better answer than "suck it." All he had to do was admit it was a vision, or say something along the lines of "I saw x, y, and z, and overreacted...or so I thought." Unfortunately for the survivors, it appears that Death has the mentality of a spoiled child and will stop at nothing to kill these survivors in the order they were originally supposed to die. Which doesn't make a lot of sense, because you would assume Death would be a pretty patient supernatural being, what with all living things having to die. But without a cranky Death, there is no Final Destination franchise, so...yeah, the villain is Death, and Death loves gory retribution.
And THAT'S for Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector!
Can this group of plucky youngsters figure out Death's design (TM) and work out a way to survive? Or will Death kill the hell out of them? And which ending are you supposed to root for?
Happily Ever After = Death by Fireball
The acting in Final Destination 5 is all pretty terrible. In defense of the actors, though, it is pretty obvious that this movie is about the kill scenes and not character development.
What was your first clue?
Taking that into consideration, I would say that David Koechner and aggressive/racist nerd P.J. Byrne were the two most annoying characters. Nicholas D'Agosto, Emma Bell, Ellen Wroe, and Arien Escarpeta were vanilla yogurt-bland, with absolutely no unique personality traits. Miles Fisher wasn't very good, but at least he transitioned believably into a Patrick Bateman-type.
Fisher, fighting the urge to run naked with a chainsaw
So who does that leave us with? Courtney B. Vance had the unenviable task of being the disbelieving cop. Tony Todd reprised his role as the Death Whisperer, AKA the guy who explains this goofy-ass plot to the potential victims. Jacqueline MacInnes Wood probably stood out the most to me, although it had little to do with her fairly sub-standard "selfish bitch" performance. No, she stood out from the rest of the cast by playing the character with the least amount of common sense.
Although the best workplace attire
Final Destination 5 is the first full-length feature film to be directed by Steven Quale. While Quale certainly didn't "wow" in his debut --- little things like character development, subtlety, film style and cinematography were obviously not priorities for him --- there is something to be said about delivering what the audience wants to see. Even though this is the fifth entry in the series, I would argue that the Quale filmed the quintessential Final Destination scene:
It's all right there. There is misdirection, false alarms, startle-scares, ridiculous coincidences, and (of course) gory death. I'll even give Quale some bonus points for making me squirm with the whole screw thing, which probably says something about how desensitized I am to movie violence. After all, this makes me uncomfortable...
Gosh, that sure would hurt!
...but this is totally rad.
At least she stuck her landing
Anyway, Quale did a fine job constructing the death sequences and didn't seem to care about anything else. For fans of the series, I think that is an acceptable trade-off.
I am not a fan of this series, though. There is something inherently anticlimactic when normal humans are trying to beat Death. It's not like Death ever loses; the time of the game may differ between players, but the outcome is always the same.
With slight variations, of course
These movies are, essentially, fictional snuff films. That notion disturbs me in films like Saw, but the Final Destination series has always been more about dramatic irony than torture porn. Instead of getting suspense through traditional storytelling means (How will they get out of this?), FD suspense comes from seeing the deadly pieces come together in an over-complicated mousetrap.
...that sometimes has lasers. Die, mice, die!
That's the basic idea, at least. In practice, Final Destination 5 is less about the suspense and more about the gruesome and abrupt payoff. Would this be a good movie if it had a clever script and/or likable characters occupying the spaces between death scenes? Probably not, but at least then I might feel bad for someone in the movie other than Tony Todd.
Dude's gonna have his work cut out for him
For what it is, though --- the fifth film in a franchise with a hare-brained premise --- Final Destination 5 isn't too bad. There is enough dark humor to make the ridiculous death scenes fun to watch, and the death scenes were pretty creative. The plot is obviously formulaic, but that's what happens when your franchise reaches #5 with a villain that isn't actually a character. I would recommend this to gore fans, but I've included videos of the only scenes you really need to see.
Here's a little tidbit I laughed at while doing background research on this movie. Check out this screen capture from the Final Destination series Wikipedia page (as of 10/10/12):
At first glance, the revenue made from Final Destination 5 is jaw-dropping. $345 million worldwide? That's insane! But then I remembered that this was Wikipedia. Do the math for FD5. Not only are the percentages of domestic vs. foreign box office obviously wrong, so is the worldwide gross and the all-time box office ranking, as well as the total tallies. Is it important? No. Will I try to get this fixed? Definitely not. Anyone who uses Wikipedia as their primary source deserves to get burned once in a while. Anyway, I thought that was pretty amusing. If you want to see the actual FD5 numbers, you can go here.
"In the heart of the city, people die for wearing the wrong colors." Well, so do nighttime joggers who don't wear reflective gear, but nobody makes a movie about them. The year was 1988 and inner-city gang warfare was in the news. In the 2000s, thanks to Michael Jordan's retirement, shoe-related murder has gone down significantly gang violence is not the epidemic it once was, especially in California, but it was a huge issue in the late 80s and early 90s, one that cried out for a voice to speak about it in popular culture. Who can speak to both the adults trying to deal with the issue and the teens tangled in the problem? Dennis Hopper? Really? Interesting choice. Hot on the heels of a career revival, helped by his performances in Blue Velvet and Hoosiers (and not at all helped by Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), Hopper jumped back in the director's chair for the first time in eight years for Colors. Let's see...a movie about the police and gang members in Los Angeles, around 1990...I wonder if racism will play a part...?
Danny McGavin (Sean Penn), a member of the LAPD's elite C.R.A.S.H. (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) unit, has a smart mouth and an attitude that requires him to lash out at the slightest sign of disrespect. After he makes a joke about tampons during a C.R.A.S.H. meeting, McGavin is assigned to a new partner, the about-ready-to-retire Bob Hodges (Robert Duvall). Hodges knows that you cannot police an area without the aid of its citizens. Well, not easily, anyway. His methods include politeness and courtesy to suspected gang members, and he usually doesn't arrest for minor infractions; he wants to build up enough trust that the people on the streets will alert him if something big or dangerous is going to happen. McGavin doesn't do things like that. If he's not in a car chase, he's in a foot race. If he's he sees a suspect, he rushes in head down. McGavin earns the nickname Pac-Man on the streets because he drives a bright yellow car and is known to eat scumbags for breakfast. Probably not literally. So, this is a good (easy-going) cop, bad (-ass) cop story, with Hodges at his wits end and McGavin completely baffled as to why he irritates his partner.
Meanwhile, a gang war is heating up between the local Crips, Bloods, and a few other gangs. Lead by the deadly serious Roccet (Don Cheadle) and accompanied by the perpetually high (and possibly mentally retarded) T-Bone (Damon Wayans), the Crips have some big plans to shoot up some Bloods. However, their plan will take them through the turf of a few other gangs, including a small but tough gang of mostly Hispanics (including a young and thankfully dialogue-free Mario Lopez). This is the sort of big, dangerous thing that Hodges needs gang members to alert him to. Will his methods carry the day, or will Pac-Man's? Or maybe neither?
Robert Duvall is a very talented actor, and he plays his part of the wise veteran pretty well. He might spend a suspicious amount of time fixing up his hair for someone who has been bald since 1960, and he might actually say "I'm too old for this shit" at one point in this film, but he plays his part and does it well. Sean Penn also turns in a good performance, even if his acting during a mourning scene is reminiscent of I am Sam. The rest of the cast is just bit players. Maria Conchita Alonso has the thankless task of playing both McGavin's love interest and reality check, but she did a decent job with what she was given. I was surprised to see Don Cheadle playing a street thug, but I'm not going to criticize the role choices for a struggling young black actor; in retrospect, it's impressive just how many complex and non-stereotypical roles Cheadle has played in his career. It was nice to see Tony Todd pop up as an angry citizen, but it was only a cameo. Dennis Hopper does a pretty good job directing. I liked that there was a lot of overlapping dialogue with both the police and the gang members. I don't know how good Hopper's instincts for storytelling were, but he was definitely able to capture realism in most scenes.
The dialogue is one of the age markers for this film. If I had a dollar for every time someone used the word "homes" or "hommie," I would have enough to have Hopper's corpse stuffed and mounted in my apartment, probably posed with a Pabst Blue Ribbon in his hand. Trust me, I've done the research, and there are very reasonable taxidermists in the area. It's not that the dialogue feels strained or awkward, but a lot of it was probably going out of style when the film was released. The music stands up pretty well, despite being clearly from 1988, with a Herbie Hancock score and Ice-T rapping the title track. Neither are particularly memorable or relevant today, but they're pretty good for the late 80s.
I'm still not sure how much I like this movie. It's not a lot, mind you, but I'm not quite sure what side of decently mediocre it falls on. On the one hand, I'm glad that this movie doesn't wrap everything up with a nice bow and say, "And THAT is how to end gang violence --- introduce free ice cream Wednesdays!" I understand that "issue" movies aren't trying to solve a problem as much as they are bringing attention to it. I just feel like Dennis Hopper was a little too pleased with himself at the end. The goal of this film is to follow McGavin's progression as a member of C.R.A.S.H., from a hot-head to something else. His is the only character that has a dramatic arc, so his must be the key story, right? Well, changing his attitude in the very last scene isn't enough. And if McGavin is the key to the narrative, then the film should have placed more importance on his work and how Hodges influenced him, for better or for worse. In other words, I think this would have been more effective if, instead of being about "the gang problem," it was a movie about a young police officer and his work with and against gang members. And while I think Penn and Duvall were fine actors in this movie, they did not share much chemistry; in a surprising choice, the script doesn't require them to. As it is, though, gangs take center stage here and the police are simply reacting to them. If the focus is on an issue, then I feel that the audience deserves a solution to that issue, naive or stupid as that solution may be. Without that, the film ends with no real sense of accomplishment.
When a movie is best known for its cameo roles, you know you're in for a "treat." A big, steaming pile of "treat." Do you know anything about djinn or genies? If you answered "no," then you are qualified to be this movie's screenwriter. If you answered "yes," then take a deep breath and exhale slowly. It's going to get worse before it gets better.
Back in the 1100s, Zoroaster (for whom Zoroastrianism is named) is a court sorcerer whose king has a wish-granting djinn (Andrew Divoff). The king's not very bright, though, so all his wishes turn out disastrously. Zoroaster captures the djinn within a gem, somehow (I'm guessing cutting-edge science), and reveals that the djinn wants to grant three wishes; after the third wish, the djinn will open the door between dimensions and the evil race of djinn will rule the earth. First off, my understanding of Zoroastrianism is that their djinn were disease-spreading lady genies, not evil world-ending bad guys. I'm not a Zoroastrian, though, so I might have misunderstood and there's some grey area that I'm missing. Or maybe my casual knowledge of an ancient religion is greater than that of a paid screenwriter. Secondly, how does anyone know about this end of the world plan? Do djinn have loose lips? And how hard is it to give someone three wishes? You know what would work better, instead of having their first two wishes go terribly wrong? Having them go right, so they aren't afraid to wish. Djinn: the stupidest of all God's creatures.
That scene takes up maybe five minutes, but it's fairly representational of the movie as a whole: confusion, frustration, and pain. Flash-forward to the late 90s, where an ancient statue is being lifted off a boat by a crane. The crane operator is drunk, so the statue falls and breaks. Oh, and it squishes someone. One of the dock workers notices a gem in the statue's wreckage. Why...could that be the djinn's gem? Sure, why not? The dude pawns it, and the pawn shop guy takes it to an auction house. The auction house gives it to Alexandra (Tammy Lauren) to estimate its value. While examining the gem, she thinks she sees something, but can't get a handle on what. Alexandra takes the gem to her friend/love-interest Josh (Tony Crane), who can use lasers and whatnot to get more detailed information on the gem. Josh plans to work on the gem in the morning, but Alexandra convinces him to do it that night. He does. The gem explodes, releasing the djinn and wrecking the lab. Writhing in pain on the ground, Josh is approached by the djinn, who asks if Josh wished that the pain would stop. He does. The djinn grants his wish. That's basically how all the djinn's encounters go from this point on:
Innocent Person: I am apparently a small nuisance to the djinn.
Djinn: Do you wish _____?
Innocent Person: Well, yeah. That's an inane, only half-serious wish that everyone shares.
Djinn: MWA HA HA! (Wish is granted in a fatal way for the innocent)
Alexandra learns about the explosion and says, "I think the thing I gave him might have killed him. Do you know how crazy that sounds?" Actually, no. You gave him something and asked him to work on it in the lab that night, and he died in the lab that night. I'd say that the odds are in your favor. Oh, and do you realize what you said implies that you gave him a nasty STD? Gross! Eventually, the djinn steals the face of a corpse and assumes a human appearance. Okay, fine. But the face he steals is heavily pockmarked. I get that it's the face of the actor that has been heavily made up to this point, but who steals a pockmarked face? It's like if I really, really needed some pants so people don't stare at the guy with no pants, and I choose assless chaps. Yes, it's a choice, but it's probably not the best one available.
Because this is a horror movie, the dumb girl (Alexandra) needs to be chased by the monster (the djinn), right? Right. But why? That's where the genius of this screenwriter comes in. You see, the djinn is granting wishes in exchange for the person's soul, which is why you have to read the fine print on anything you agree to. Why does a djinn need souls? To power up his gem. Yeah, I thought it exploded in the lab, too. Guess not. Once the gem is powered up, the djinn needs to grant three wishes to the person who woke him up, which is somehow Alexandra and not the late Josh. Once the three wishes are granted, he can unleash the djinn into this world. Why does he want to do that? Well, according to an expert, "djinn are the face of fear itself." Oh. Right.
In a movie like this, it is probably better to not focus on the acting and directing. Robert Kurtzman is not a good director, Peter Atkins is not a good writer, and Andrew Divoff, Tammy Lauren, and Tony Crane are not good actors. The special effects are unimpressive, too. This movie does, however, have a lot of cameos from horror movie icons. Angus Scrimm (from Phantasm) reads the opening monologue. Robert Englund plays a small supporting role and, shockingly, is not evil. Ted Raimi is the guy who gets squished into meat jelly by the falling statue. Kane Hodder and Tony Todd both get killed by the djinn. Whenever one of these guys made an appearance, I cheered up. They might not be major characters in this movie, but their presence signifies that something cool is about to happen. Well, at least something that should have been cool is going to happen, anyway.
Wishmaster is the sort of movie that simultaneously bores, underwhelms, and confuses viewers. It's boring because the script is wretched, the pace is slow, and the characters are unsympathetic. It's underwhelming because the deaths, while fairly creative, aren't very cool and are often just odd. It's confusing because the explanations given for djinns are don't jive with common knowledge. It's like they made Saint Peter into a brain-eating zombie gargoyle; while it's possible that there are some texts that support such an interpretation, it's not the general consensus. I know next to nothing about djinn (I did take a quarter of World Religion at the College of DuPage), and that was still enough to realize how arbitrary this movie's take on them was. Still, this movie did bring Freddy Kreuger, Jason Voorhies, and the Candyman into the same movie, so it's not all bad. It is just almost entirely bad.
I enjoy horror movies, but I am more than willing to admit that most of them are pretty bad. The horror genre usually doesn't have much more to offer than some unique ways to kill teenagers, but every so often, I get surprised. Candyman was one of those times. This film distances itself from its horror brethren in some very basic ways. There are no teen-aged main characters, for starters. Instead of creating a fictional city or town, this movie takes place in Chicago, primarily in the Cabrini-Green housing projects, which are scary enough on their own. The main character in this movie is played by an Oscar nominee (not for this role), which is one of the few, if not the only, time that has happened in a horror movie. Oh, and it doesn't completely suck.
Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) is a graduate student researching urban legends for her thesis. She polls freshmen for any legends they know and notes that most legends have many versions. While researching, she comes across the Candyman legend. Like Bloody Mary, if you say his name five times in front of the mirror, he allegedly appears and murders you. Helen doesn't think much about the legend at first, and she and her friend Bernadette jokingly say his name in the mirror five times. Nothing happens. Big surprise. Later, she meets a maid at the university who claims that the Candyman story is true. This intrigues Helen, because being able to trace a legend back to its real-world counterpart would be a scoop for her thesis. The maid claims that the Candyman murdered someone in the Cabrini-Green projects, which leads to Helen finding some newspaper articles about a hook-related murder. She has some theories on the crime that would help explain some of the more supernatural elements of the story, like Candyman appearing near the mirror, she just needs some hard evidence. Helen researches the story on location in the projects, but she does not come much closer to the truth.
That's when he appears. While Candyman (Tony Todd) doesn't look like a nice guy, he doesn't have the gross disfigurement that most iconic horror villains possess. He does have a hook in the disgusting stump where his hand should be, which I suppose makes up for his otherwise normal appearance. Candyman is upset by Helen's research, as she is helping convince others that he does not exist. Candyman urges her to become his victim (which is a little awkward), but she resists, so he decides to prove himself to her. Helen blacks out and awakens in the Cabrini-Green apartment of the nicest resident she interviewed during her research; Helen is covered in blood, notices that the apartment's dog has been decapitated, and the resident's infant is missing. Beside herself with grief, the resident attacks Helen, who is forced to protect herself with a butcher knife. Not surprisingly, this escapade lands her in jail, but her husband (Xander Berkeley) bails her out.
Bad move. Candyman begins appearing more and more frequently, but only to Helen. He has the baby hidden somewhere and will kill it if Helen does not give herself to him, to join him and strengthen his legend. As the movie continues, Candyman keeps killing and Helen keeps getting blamed for those crimes. Despite being wanted for murder, Helen realizes that she is the baby's only hope of survival and decides to do whatever it takes to save it.
That might not sound too good, but there's a lot to like in this move and there are some aspects that I genuinely appreciate. I like Candyman's desire to seduce Helen into becoming his victim. He could have killed her at any time, but he wanted to make her, the urban legend debunker, part of his urban legend. That's actually a pretty cool motivation. I like Candyman's voice; the production team treated his dialogue as voice over, so when he spoke, it felt like an omnipotent narrator was speaking. That was a nice touch that definitely added to the creepiness of the character. I also liked the scenes where Candyman handled/was made of bees. I'm not a huge fan of bugs crawling all over characters, but bugs that sting are definitely scary. I don't usually squirm while watching movies, but that made me wiggle a bit.
I think this was a pretty smart slasher flick, too. It went out of its way to avoid a lot of slasher cliches; all the people that died were truly innocent, not promiscuous, drunken teens on a drug binge. If this film had been edited just a little bit better, there would even be a question as to whether Candyman existed or not. He's only on screen without Helen for about fifteen seconds; everything else happens with Helen present. If those fifteen seconds had been cut, then there we could make a valid point that Helen could be responsible for everything and Candyman was either her going crazy or something that possessed her. That angle would have improved this movie's IQ enough to be a classic.
Unfortunately, that is not this film's only shoulda-coulda-woulda. Despite all the unique and smart things in this movie, a lot of careless mistakes are made:
Ted Raimi has a cameo as a "bad boy"
Helen walks into a public men's restroom outside Cabrini-Green. That's a whole horror premise by itself.
Trevor, Helen's husband, is a professor married to a graduate student in his own department. He cheats on her with one of his students. And he's paid enough to have a gigantic apartment on Chicago's North side with a view of downtown? How does that happen?
Helen's Chicago apartment does not have a deadbolt or latch. Now that's fiction.
A lot of horror movies get people to overlook the overall crappiness of the film by going all-out for the climax. Not so much here. I thought the climax was pretty ineffective, but it did set up a pretty good ending. That's a trade-off I'm willing to make, and just one of the many choices that director Bernard Rose makes that work well. Most of the budget went toward special effects instead of actors and script, so the casting choices are pretty solid (Tony Todd is a creepy man), even if their acting isn't great (Xander Berkeley, I'm looking at you). Is this a masterpiece? No, it's too stupid for that. It is a good horror movie that is also a pretty decent movie in its own rights.
