The hook is there, and so are the bees and the blood, in the trailer released Thursday for “Candyman,” a sequel of sorts to the 1992 Chicago horror classic.
The city also is central to the new film, produced and co-written by Jordan Peele (“Us,” “Get Out”). In the original, a graduate student researched a supernatural killer in the Cabrini-Green public housing development who would be summoned if someone said “Candyman” five times into a mirror.
With Cabrini mostly gone now, the new film finds an artist moving into a luxury condo on its former Near North Side site and saying, “I feel really connected to this neighborhood.”
He creates a gallery exhibit of gruesome paintings that includes a mirror tempting the hipster visitors to recite the magic words. Another sequence shows five women chanting “Candyman” into a restroom mirror, with unpleasant results.
A slow cover version of Destiny’s Child’s “Say My Name” adds to the menace.
“Gentrification is what helped us to reimagine the story because Cabrini-Green is gone,” director Nia DaCosta told Deadline. “The movie from the ’90s has a vision of Cabrini-Green where it’s sort of on its way to being knocked down.”
Noting the development there since, she added, “What we talk about in the film are the ghosts that have been left behind because of gentrification.”
“Candyman” is in theaters June 12.
