Candyman is legendary nowadays, a nineties horror film that not only featured a terrifying killer, but also brought attention to life in the Projects, a very real ordeal outside the silver screen.What's wrong with its sequel? Well, I will give it some credit; it has the same classic look and style of the first film, decent actors and even features some of the originals viewers have come to love. However, Candyman 2 is stripped of nearly everything that made the first one memorable.Professor Purcell, formerly a pretentious blowhard who belittles everyone in sight, is now a depressed wreck who gives people cheap thrills for a living and visits the bar frequently. I ended up feeling sorry for the guy, honestly. Why? I wanted to punch him in the face while watching the first film! He was very effective, one of those characters you love to hate, and in the sequel, he's just a victim to be knocked off right away. Where's Helen Lyle, the woman who went for the truth until it took away her soul? Where's Chicago's infamous Cabrini-Green, the eerie housing project with a dark history? Why did they shift the story away from a perfectly good setting, only to drop it in New Orleans for no apparent reason? The first Candyman was daring, innovative for its time, a cult classic and an almost poetic slasher film. The sequel is mostly jump scares, excessive gore, unmemorable characters and a plot that doesn't entirely make sense.Candyman 2 isn't terrible, it's just hollow, dull.

Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (1995)** (out of 4) Annie Tarrant (Kelly Rowan) arrives in New Orleans to investigate why her brother (William O'Leary) has been thrown into job suspected of murder. It seems the brother believes that their father was killed by Candyman (Tony Todd) but the sister doesn't believe this until she uncovers a family secret.CANDYMAN was released and was a surprise hit with fans and critics. It remains one of the best movies of its type and is quite scary in its own right. CANDYMAN: FAREWELL TO THE FLESH isn't a bad movie but at the same time you can't help but be highly disappointed with it. Once again a very good horror movie has a sequel that seems to be more money driven than anything else.I say that because there's a lot missing from this picture. The biggest issue that I had with it is the fact that there really aren't any scares here. The first film managed to have an atmosphere of its own and the scares were there. That's certainly not the case here as there's just no tension to be found anywhere and I'd argue that there's not even an atmosphere, which is too bad since the New Orleans settings could have had more done with them.I do think the film tried to be something more than your typical slasher but there just wasn't enough done with it. The entire story dealing with the slave and killing of Daniel Robitaille was very good and the film could have used more scenes like these. Todd, as you'd expect, is excellent in his role as are Rowan and O'Leary. Director Bill Condon certainly made a professional looking movie and there's no doubt that it's well-made. Still, CANDYMAN: FAREWELL TO THE FLESH is mildly entertaining but a letdown.

Dr. Philip Purcell has written a book on the Candyman legend that dismisses the myth as nothing but superstition. In front of his audience, Purcell invokes the Candyman but nothing happens. But once the lecture is over, Purcell is torn open by the Candyman in a bar bathroom. The police arrest Ethan Tarrant, a mentally disturbed man, who had assaulted Purcell earlier. But his sister, art teacher Annie Tarrant, believes otherwise. With her husband Paul McKeever, Annie revisits her childhood home, which is now an abandoned property filled with vagrant squatters. She begins to find links between the Candyman legend & her own family history. And as soon as Annie herself invokes him in order to disprove the myth in front of her students, the Candyman appears, killing people around her in order to get her to believe in him. Dodging both the ghost & the police, who are convinced that she is responsible for the Candyman's victims, Annie discovers that Candyman – real name Daniel Robitaille – was a former slave who was brutally murdered by his owners after getting a white woman pregnant. And the kicker is that the child that Robitaille fathered was Annie's great-grandmother.Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh was the first of two sequels to CANDYMAN, an impressive but slightly overrated horror sleeper of the 1992 season that became a big hit & was the second major cult creation of horror master Clive Barker, already famous for the Cenobites of the HELLRAISER series. The film was based on one of Barker's short stories.While the original was an excellent horror flick that engaged on both a cerebral & a visual level, this sequel is strictly by the numbers. Bill Condon relies on far too many false jumps & red herrings during the first half that becomes tiring to watch. This, coupled with the overuse of Philip Glass' score from the original to the point that the ethereal effect it had in the first film became nothing but meaningless in this one makes the film's first half decidedly mediocre.But once the story kicks in the second half & Kelly Rowan's heroine is on the chase to defeat what is essentially her ancestor, Farewell to the Flesh picks up considerably to rank as a passable sequel. The visual effects are good, especially the ending where Tony Todd's hook-handed ghost is defeated by Rowan smashing the mirror, causing his form to shatter like glass, an effect that looks remarkable. Another thing that elevates the film slightly is the whole connection between the heroine & the Candyman, as well as revealing the ghost's origins, finally solving the mystery behind the legend.The acting is okay in places. Tony Todd practically owns the film from his first appearance. He is probably the only actor besides Hellraiser villain Doug Bradley to really get into the nuances of his character, giving the film a good monster. As for the rest of the cast, everyone does passably well, although I found Veronica Cartwright's neurotic mother a bit of an eyesore.

The Candyman legend moves on to New Orleans, and has a whole new set of victims. Annie Tarrant (Kelly Rowan) is a school teacher. Her father was killed by the Candyman. Her brother Ethan (William O'Leary) is wrongly accused of murders, the latest being a Candyman denial writer.The change in setting concerns me, but New Orleans has some great potential for urban legends. It goes into the life of Daniel Robitaille a little bit more with maybe a possible way to kill him once and for all. But it's not as creepy as it needs to be. The movie lacks any tension or fear.Kelly Rowan is playing a typical scared victim. At least she has the skills to back it up. But the atmosphere isn't up to the original. It's all a weaker version of itself. It certainly doesn't have as powerful of an ending as the original.