Candyman: clip from new movie tells the story of Helen Lyle

The new Candyman movie directed by Nia DaCosta has been referred to as a “spiritual sequel” to the 1992 Candyman (watch it HERE) – but given that the film directly acknowledges the events of the ’92 movie, I’m not sure why we can’t just start calling it a straightforward sequel. In the clip embedded above, a character from the new film tells the story of Candyman heroine Helen Lyle, who was played by Virginia Madsen in the original film. The details have gotten mixed up along the way, but it still establishes the fact that this Candyman is a follow-up to the first one.

DaCosta wrote the screenplay for the new film with producers Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld. It has the following synopsis:

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 and his girlfriend, gallery director Brianna Cartwright, 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 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 terrifyingly viral wave of violence that puts him on a collision course with destiny.

The film stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, and original Candyman cast member Vanessa Williams, reprising the role of Anne-Marie McCoy. The Anthony McCoy mentioned in the synopsis is Anne-Marie’s son, the baby from the first film. Tony Todd is also in the film, and so is a Candyman who is named Sherman Fields and played by Michael Hargrove.

Ian Cooper produced this Candyman with Peele and Rosenfeld.