Candyman 2 - Farewell to the Flesh (1995)

more stylish than the first

i liked this follow up to the original Candyman movie.i found it
entertaining and the acting is pretty good.i also liked that there was
a back story that fleshed out the title character and gave him some
humanity.i didn't find the movie scary and there wasn't a lot of
gore,so gore hounds will be disappointed.the story itself doesn't have
a lot of depth to it,other than the back story.still the movie goes
along at a good clip,and it's very stylish,more so than the first one
was.was it as good as the original?i think so.i don't think it was
better,but it was as good.in terms of entertainment,i thought it was a
good movie.if you expect to be scared,you might be disappointed
here.otherwise,you might like it.for me,Candyman 2:Farewell to the
Flesh is a 4/5 March 2, 2008

WAY BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL

SEQUELS ARE USUALLY BAD. NOT IN THIS CASE. THIS IS ONE SEQUEL THAT IS BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL. IF YOU LIKE BLOOD, HORROR, AND GORE GO GET THIS MOVIE. November 3, 2007

A Sad Story

I agreed with this, at least what I saw. Mainly, making the Candyman character a horror icon along the lines of Freddy or Jason. The scenes of seeing the title character hazed, lynched and left for dead borders on the unwatchable. But unlike Freddy or Jason, this is genuinely terrifying because it is more super realitic. The title name the Candy man implies that the black man who has the lead character was intellectually childlike- a mob hazed and lynched him, stunk honey on him hench the word candy and then the bees were attracted to the honey, murdering him. The super mega low budget was commenting on the childlike old fashioned hicks who did this. Where I live in Duluth and Superior it is a glorified ghetto- they are stuck in like the 1870s. They are on a level with the animals, especially a squirrel. They taught them not to accept anything that was different. They have paid for it, but still refuse to learn moral lessons from atrocities of the past. Their tired, old fashioned values is depressing to watch and again super mega low budget, some real big time immaturity here. That they would even make this appaled me. February 3, 2006

Candyman: The Farewell to the Flesh (1995)

Director: Bill Condon
Cast: Tony Todd, Kelly Rowan, William O'Leary, Bill Nunn, Matt Clark, David Gianopoulos, Fay Hauser, Joshua Gibran Mayweather, Timothy Carhart, Veronica Cartwright.
Running Time: 93 minutes
Rated R for violence and gore, and for some sexuality and language.

Many die-hard horror fans absolutely worship the original "Candyman" because it's so genuinely scary and intelligently adapted from a Clive Barker story. This sequel (it looks more like a prequel, actually, with all those flashbacks) is not entirely unwatchable, it just immensely pales in comparison to the original, like so many other redundant sequels do. It seems though director Bill Condon and his army of crew members totally missed the point of Barker's tale and of the original film. What began as a tale of enigmatic mystery and mystique, brooding with paranoia is now been cut down to another run-of-the-mill hacker series that takes away from the brilliance of the 1992 original.

It's Mardi Gras season in New Orleans, where inner-city school teacher Annie Tarrant (Kelly Rowan) proves to her class that there is no Candyman by looking into a mirror and saying his name five times. She should have listened to them because of course there is a Candyman and her brother Ethan (William O'Leary) knows it, as he's been arrested for the murder of the smug fat bloke from the first film, but of course he's innocent and the real culprit is the hook-handed killer, back to wreak more havoc in the lives of Annie's family. Believing that Ethan and her mother (Veronica Cartwright) aren't telling her the whole truth about his arrest and her father's death, Annie delves into the legend herself.

"Farewell to the Flesh" departs from the original with Annie's deep, dark family secret, which is not only completely predictable but also totally uninteresting. The supposed twists only start coming after way too much draggy set-up where the movie tries to create mystery about the existence of the Candyman even though we all know he's real and we all know what's going to happen from this point on. The menace of the character has gone, his appearances are too numerous and aren't scary, and the moments when he pops up to stick his hook through someone's back are completely expected. Basically this does nothing that the original didn't do better, with the poor black area of town, the missing kid, the cops believing Ethan carried out the Candyman's crimes and the Candyman's spell over Annie all being derivative of the first movie. The Mardi Gras setting adds some colour but has nothing to do with the story and gives us the irrelevant, at times nonsensical radio show that weaves through the movie. The change of location also weakens the Candyman mythos, because an urban legend in one part of a town I can believe, but now apparently everyone in the civilised world has heard of, and lives in fear of, the Candyman. The film tries too hard to turn him into a horror icon along the lines of Freddy or Michael Myers, and it succeeds only too well, because this time around the impact has gone, too much detail is revealed about his origin and the story is a pale imitation of what's already been done before. December 31, 2005

Decent Sequal

This movie like most sufferes from sequalitis, however not as bad as you might think. What I did like about this movie was that it drew in some of the blanks that the first movie left.

Who exactly is Candyman? How did he come to be? What happened to the white woman he loved?

Basically the movie goes like this (from memory haven't watched it in awhile)

A young white teacher, from a wealthy family, living in New Orleans, who teaches the poorer black students, tries to convince her students that Candyman doesn't exist, only to become haunted by him. She soon discovers a deep secret in her families past that is directly connected to the man and the event that started the legend.

What I liked about this movie was that it went deeper into the legend of the Candyman. It turned him from a typical villian into a tragic one. Although the ending was predictiable it was decent movie that worked well with the first.
October 12, 2005

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