As if the forthcoming Candyman could get any scarier, director Nia DaCosta just shared a chilling new teaser that reveals the killer’s origin story. And much like the history of America, it’s steeped in what DaCosta calls “Black pain.”
The director shared the teaser on Twitter Wednesday, writing in the caption: “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.”
The final scene of the teaser, which features “shadow puppetry” by Manual Cinema, explains Candyman’s origin as a Black painter, who befalls to a lynch mob after falling in love with a White woman whose portrait he captured.
In DaCosta’s reimagining, which is being produced by Oscar winner Jordan Peele, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars as visual artist Anthony McCoy, who lives in a newly renovated gentrified version of Cabrini Green with his girlfriend, played by Teyonah Parris. (Fans may remember that in the original 1992 film, Candyman haunted and terrorized the Chicago housing project.)
Desperate to make a name for himself in his stalling career, McCoy begins painting versions of Candyman and unknowingly opens a door for the menacing to continue.
DaCosta said back in February that her sequel “talk[s] about the ghosts that are left behind.”
Candyman, which was originally slated to hit theaters later this month, has been pushed back to September 25.