New 'Candyman' Teaser Puts The Social Commentary Behind This Horror Icon At The Forefront

Candyman is coming back. Universal has released a teaser spotlighting Nia DaCosta's new take on the classic horror tale, which is due out in September. The new Candyman teaser re-introduces the Candyman origin story by embedding it in the stories of Black persecution and pain. Watch the Candyman teaser below.

"Candyman ain't a he. Candyman is the whole damn hive. A story like that, pain like that last forever," a man tells Yahya Abdul-Mateen II's artist who is investigating the urban legend. As shadow puppets re-enact the birth of Candyman, images flash of Black people's persecution by the police and lynch mobs, which the man suggests is how Candyman came to be. "Candyman is how we deal with the fact that these things happen. That they still happen."

As DaCosta said with a previous teaser that dug into the social roots of her take on Candyman, the film lies "at the intersection of white violence and black pain, is about unwilling martyrs. The people they were, the symbols we turn them into, the monsters we are told they must have been." The new take taps into contemporary discussions about race in a way that the original only touched upon, with a renewed sense of justice in the wake of the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement.

Here is the synopsis for Candyman:

For as long as residents can remember, the housing projects of Chicago's Cabrini Green neighborhood were terrorized by a word-of-mouth ghost story about a supernatural killer with a hook for a hand, easily summoned by those daring to repeat his name five times into a mirror. In present day, a decade after the last of the Cabrini towers were torn down, visual artist Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II; HBO's Watchmen, Us) and his girlfriend, gallery director Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris; If Beale Street Could Talk, The Photograph), move into a luxury loft condo in Cabrini, now gentrified beyond recognition and inhabited by upwardly mobile millennials.

With Anthony's painting career on the brink of stalling, a chance encounter with a Cabrini Green old-timer (Colman Domingo; HBO's Euphoria, Assassination Nation) exposes Anthony to the tragically horrific nature of the true story behind Candyman. Anxious to maintain his status in the Chicago art world, Anthony begins to explore these macabre details in his studio as fresh grist for paintings, unknowingly opening a door to a complex past that unravels his own sanity and unleashes a terrifying wave of violence that puts him on a collision course with destiny.

Candyman opens on September 25, 2020.