Candyman: A Review

Written By Pink Flowers

Candyman got me shook, y’all — for realz!

Y’all must be like “This bitch watch a lot of trash, yo!” Yeah? And? I’m an artist and it is my occupation to explore what’s out there in the world. I refuse to engage contempt before giving something a good shot within the appropriate cultural context. Anyway, I got plenty of justification for watching a movie “like” Candyman, whatever that means (a scary movie, a movie with black people, etc). Just read the post! Lol!

Candyman is the new latest release from Jordan Peele (Get Out and Us fame). Both previous films are giving you horror with a modern and critical eye (no spoilers for the Get Out fans) peering through the lens of race. Racial anxiety, in fact, seeds the terror and is a key component. Both of those films (and Candyman) feature Black characters confronting manifestations of Black paranoia as it reaches the level of urban myth.

Get Out’s fear of appropriation and commodification of Black excellence specifically among progressive-minded Whites goes as far as auctioning off Black talents. The film Us evoked the inevitable cognitive dissonance in a society fabricated on the exploitation of people, places and things we do not see. There’s some debilitating imposter syndrome going on in these films as well.

Jordan Peele (and director Nia DaCosta) twist the plot of [trigger warning] a Black man lynched for sex with a white woman who haunts the former site of Chicago’s Cabrini Green housing project, with the new film daring to address the very existence of “projects” and the gentrification that makes them, and the people who live in them, disappear. It finds its outrage in modern the injustice of displacement and police brutality. By the time they got done with the material, I was rooting for the ghost!

Aside from Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s (be still my heart!) performance, supported by Teyonah Parris and Coleman Domingo (if you don’t recognize the names, please look them up), Candyman is serving critical awareness and a wake up call that’s way scarier than a spook (I said it) with a claw hand—that is, if you care to actually stop, look and listen. The tag line “Say It” evokes the likes of Sandra Bland and other targets of state violence. None of that shit is accidental. I don’t know about Candyman, but I got a list of other names I dare you to say.

Pink Flowers

Pink Flowers is a Black trans artist, peacemaker, educator, and pleasure activist whose work lives at the intersection of embodiment, governance, and cultural transformation. Trained in Theater of the Oppressed, Art of Hosting, and Navajo-informed Peacemaking practices, Pink designs spaces where conflict can be addressed, power can be examined, and joy can be reclaimed.

Her artistic and pedagogical practice draws from African trickster cosmology, Brazilian Joker traditions, shamanic ritual, and cooperative economics. She is the founder of the award-winning Falconworks Theater Company (2005–2021), which used popular theater to build civic capacity and participatory leadership in historically marginalized communities.

Pink served for over five years as a trained Peacemaker in the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, facilitating restorative processes within the New York City court system. From 2015–2018, she worked in cooperative business development with the Center for Family Life, supporting worker-owned enterprises in immigrant communities.

She currently serves as Director of Education and Training for the Inter-Cooperative Council in Ann Arbor, where she leads leadership development and conflict engagement initiatives. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally, including at the Stretch Festival in Berlin and the Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference.

Across ritual, performance, mediation, and institutional design, Pink’s work asks a central question:

What becomes possible when we refuse shame and choose conscious power instead?

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