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A haunting new trailer for the horror movie 'Candyman' appears to highlight real cases of racial injustice

Libby Torres   

A haunting new trailer for the horror movie 'Candyman' appears to highlight real cases of racial injustice
  • Director Nia DaCosta shared a chilling new teaser for her upcoming film "Candyman" on Wednesday.
  • The clip appears to reference real-life instances of racism and violence against Black people.
  • "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 wrote along with the video.
  • The short video features shadow puppets recreating a series of vignettes, at least two of which seem to be inspired by real-life murders.
  • There are also several nods to the origins of the Candyman character, who was portrayed by Tony Todd in the original 1992 movie.
  • "Candyman" premieres September 25 in theaters.

Director Nia DaCosta shared a haunting new teaser trailer for her upcoming movie "Candyman" on Wednesday, and fans are in awe of the powerful clip.

"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 captioned the video on Twitter.

In addition to exploring the backstory of the Candyman character (first portrayed by Tony Todd in the 1992 movie of the same name), the trailer also appears to reference several real-life cases of racism.

One such vignette shows a black man being forced from his home and dragged behind a truck by several men. It could be a reference to the real-life 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr., who was beaten by three white men in Texas and dragged behind their truck for nearly three miles until he died.

The murder became international news, with one of the men receiving life in prison while the other two received the death penalty and were executed.

Another scene in the clip appears to portray the so-called "trial" and execution of 14-year-old George Stinney Jr. in June 1944. Stinney was accused of murdering two white girls, and despite a lack of evidence and no official confession, was sentenced to death after an all-white jury deliberated for just ten minutes.

In 2014, 70 years later, a judge overturned the conviction on the basis that the 1944 trial and subsequent execution had violated Stinney's constitutional rights.

Other scenes in the trailer appear to portray the backstory of the fictional Candyman himself, a wealthy 19th-century black man who worked as a painter. Per the movie's synopsis, Candyman was hired to paint the portrait of the daughter of a wealthy white landowner, and the two fell in love.

However, when the affair came to light, Candyman was set upon by a lynch mob, who cut off his hand, replaced it with a hook, then covered his body in honey so that bees would sting him to death.

In the new film, which is a direct sequel to the 1992 original of the same name, a painter named Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) finds inspiration in the Candyman's grisly past.

And in the latest trailer, Anthony is shown at his easel, seemingly portraying the stories of murdered black men in his paintings.

"Candyman" premieres September 25. The new film is a direct sequel to the 1992 movie and is co-written by Nia DaCosta, Jordan Peele, and Win Rosenfeld, and directed by DaCosta. You can watch the first trailer below.

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