#Nia DaCosta’s new ‘Candyman’ teaser video is chilling

The upcoming reimagining of “Candyman” might be even more bone-chilling than the original.

Director Nia DaCosta shared an eerie but stunning animated teaser for her reboot of the 1992 horror classic, which resonates now more than ever amid the Black Lives Matter movement, heightened by the recent police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many others.

“CANDYMAN, 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,” DaCosta, 30, tweeted along with a haunting video featuring shadow puppets.

The teaser, which clocks in at 2 ½ minutes, loosely depicts the origins of the movie’s central character. Puppets are tortured by police and mobs, vilified, shunned, abused and exiled.

The movie, produced and co-written by Jordan Peele, will pay homage to the original. Both feature Tony Todd as the titular character, who emerges when his name is uttered five times. The 2020 version will explore the gentrification of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects featured in the original.

A synopsis goes into more detail about the plot, including how the film weaves the legend of Candyman with the “upwardly mobile millennials” moving into the neighborhood.

“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.”

The highly anticipated movie already has fans excited online, with many declaring the short-film-like teaser shared by DaCosta “amazing” and “breathtaking.”

“Wow that was powerful,” one viewer wrote. “I f–king love this idea that a Candyman is created from the hate and violence against members of the Black community. Candyman is the ‘monster’ born out of racism.”

“This was both beautiful and macabre, a horrific recount of the pain inflicted upon PoCs, and in the case of Candyman the black community,” added another.

“Candyman” was originally slated for a June release but was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The film now hits theaters Sept. 25.