Content warning: police violence
I should preface this article by mentioning that Helen Lyle, of the original Candyman, was a fascinating and iconic final girl in her own right. A victim who eventually fell for the monster of her own story only to transcend his monstrousness and Virginia Madsen‘s expressive eyes and relatability made her a truly unforgettable heroin. But her story never truly escaped the bounds of her own personal growth and trajectory. And though she will always have a place in horror history, the 2021 Candyman remake offers something new and much more timely.
If the original Candyman was a seduction story, 2021’s reboot can be seen as a story of revenge and reparations. While the original Candyman was tangentially involved in topics of racial violence, it was mostly about Helen Lyle breaking free from the sexist and ignorant men around her. In this iteration, Candyman points its lens at the cycle of violence perpetuated by the racial inequality that has poisoned the US since its conception. And while Anthony McCoy is undoubtedly the star of the film, his girlfriend and fellow artist Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris) is the survivor and ultimate victor who walks out of the violence and male dominated carnage alive and with a powerful group of allies at her back.
Throughout the film, Brianna is done pretty dirty. She’s sidelined both professionally and romantically in favor of her boyfriend, the tortured artist and scion with the legacy reaching back to the 1992 Candyman. But Brianna has her own trauma and her own past though it is scarcely explored in the film. Her father was an artist who ended up committing suicide before her eyes as a child. Brianna hopes to become a successful art curator but people only seem interested in her in relation to her work with Anthony. Once Anthony starts to spiral, she is completely shut out and only her brother seems to care about what she is going through.
At the end when she and Anthony are captured and Anthony is forced into the position of Candyman, it is Brianna who is at first forced to watch helplessly as they are pushed toward their inevitable fate, just as she helplessly watched her father as a little girl. At the end while they defeat the seeming villain and Anthony lays dying, Brianna, who along with Anthony is a fairly upper class citizen, sees that the police are arriving. She frantically waves them over, begging for her help and they respond by shooting Anthony and then attempting to coerce her into corroborating their story of self defense. In this moment when she feels most horrified and betrayed, she claims that power that she has been kept on the edges of throughout the film. She calls for the Candyman, that power that has claimed her boyfriend for its own and in the form of Anthony it comes and slaughters the police officers. Candyman tells Brianna to tell everyone what happened here. And in this way, ultimately, though one can argue that it is Anthony who undergoes this evolution, it is Brianna who, like Helen Lyle, claims this power for her own. It is her voice that is heard, and she who enacts her vengeance for all that she has lost.
Brianna represents a timely improvement on the final girl who we followed through the Candyman movies. And though the films focus on the image of the male monster, it is our final girl who ultimately walks out alive, empowered and forever changed by the events that she has survived.
