Candyman 2 - Farewell to the Flesh

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A stylish though inferior sequel to its classic predecessor, Bill Condon's Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh deepens our knowledge of what made the murdered Daniel Robitaille turn into the monster that haunts dreams and mirrors. But some of it is still pretty routine: schoolteacher Annie takes a long time to connect her family's plantation-owning past and her own artistic talent with the legend, and is far too ready to say the Candyman's name five times in a mirror to debunk her pupils' fears.

The setting: New Orleans at Carnival time with a disc jockey whimsically reminding us that Carnival is the last farewell to pleasure before the rigors of Lent. Tony Todd, who returns as the Candyman, gives a quiet dignity and sadness to the monstrous specter with a hook for a hand. His life was torn from him and he is mad for vengeance, yet he has an artistic temperament and loved Annie's kinswoman Caroline. Condon captures an attractive elegiac tone in much of this, as well as moments of brutal horror. --Roz Kaveney

Description

His myth has endured for generations. His legacy is eternal rage. And now he's back...with a vengeance! Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh continues the tale of the phantom-like figure who wreaksa terrible fate upon those who chant his name five times while looking into a mirrorand come face-to-face with grisly death. A victim of unspeakable evil while he lived, the "Candyman" (Tony Todd, The Crow) has become evil incarnate in his afterlife. This time, he haunts the city of New Orleans, where a young schoolteacher named Annie Tarrant (Kelly Rowan, 187) is struggling to solve the brutal murder of her father. The locals insist that he was slain by the Candyman,but Annie is not convinced...until she unwittingly summons him forth, learns the secret of his power, and discovers the link that connects her to him. But can she stop him before he kills again?

Customer Reviews:

A Sad Story.......2006-02-03

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.

Candyman: The Farewell to the Flesh (1995).......2005-12-31

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.

Decent Sequal.......2005-10-12

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.

0 STARS: Farewell to this raw SEWAGE!!.......2005-08-21

The original "Candyman" sucks so bad, but everybody praises it and I kept wondering to myself, "am I missing something?" So, I tried watching it again and it still sucked as I could not even get through it, so I figured maybe I should watch the sequels and maybe I would find something that I liked about this series. Well, after watching "Candyman 2", one becomes cognizant that this series is just full of rubbish...again, the social overtones and politically correct notions present in this series make the movie absurd in the extreme. The villain in "Candyman" makes me want to laugh because he is so NOT scary...if you want a good laugh, watch the "Candyman" series, but if you want to be scared, you would even do better to watch "Ren and Stimpy". In all seriousness, watch "Halloween" and "Halloween II" if you want to see a good slasher and horror movie that really produces the goods and doesn't try to send a social message. LOL. Some people call "Candyman 2- Farewell to the Flesh" a horror movie...I just call it rubbish.

baaaaad sequel!.......2005-08-06

I was expecting this movie to be way better especially from how good the first one is, when i watched it i was incredibly disappointed, this film is nothing like the first one and is boring and crap, i would rather sit through hellraiser than this pile of junk again.

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