Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Dr. Philip Purcell has written a book on the Candyman legend that dismisses the myth as nothing but superstition. In front of his audience, Purcell invokes the Candyman but nothing happens. But once the lecture is over, Purcell is torn open by the Candyman in a bar bathroom. The police arrest Ethan Tarrant, a mentally disturbed man, who had assaulted Purcell earlier. But his sister, art teacher Annie Tarrant, believes otherwise. With her husband Paul McKeever, Annie revisits her childhood home, which is now an abandoned property filled with vagrant squatters. She begins to find links between the Candyman legend & her own family history. And as soon as Annie herself invokes him in order to disprove the myth in front of her students, the Candyman appears, killing people around her in order to get her to believe in him. Dodging both the ghost & the police, who are convinced that she is responsible for the Candyman's victims, Annie discovers that Candyman – real name Daniel Robitaille – was a former slave who was brutally murdered by his owners after getting a white woman pregnant. And the kicker is that the child that Robitaille fathered was Annie's great-grandmother.Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh was the first of two sequels to CANDYMAN, an impressive but slightly overrated horror sleeper of the 1992 season that became a big hit & was the second major cult creation of horror master Clive Barker, already famous for the Cenobites of the HELLRAISER series. The film was based on one of Barker's short stories.While the original was an excellent horror flick that engaged on both a cerebral & a visual level, this sequel is strictly by the numbers. Bill Condon relies on far too many false jumps & red herrings during the first half that becomes tiring to watch. This, coupled with the overuse of Philip Glass' score from the original to the point that the ethereal effect it had in the first film became nothing but meaningless in this one makes the film's first half decidedly mediocre.But once the story kicks in the second half & Kelly Rowan's heroine is on the chase to defeat what is essentially her ancestor, Farewell to the Flesh picks up considerably to rank as a passable sequel. The visual effects are good, especially the ending where Tony Todd's hook-handed ghost is defeated by Rowan smashing the mirror, causing his form to shatter like glass, an effect that looks remarkable. Another thing that elevates the film slightly is the whole connection between the heroine & the Candyman, as well as revealing the ghost's origins, finally solving the mystery behind the legend.The acting is okay in places. Tony Todd practically owns the film from his first appearance. He is probably the only actor besides Hellraiser villain Doug Bradley to really get into the nuances of his character, giving the film a good monster. As for the rest of the cast, everyone does passably well, although I found Veronica Cartwright's neurotic mother a bit of an eyesore.

The Candyman (Tony Todd) arrives in New Orleans and sets his sights on a young woman whose family was ruined by the immortal killer years before.So, how did this sequel come to be? Bernard Rose, who had made the original film, had written the first draft of the script, and it is interesting because Candyman never actually appears in it. (Apparently about this time he was also working on a script for "Midnight Meat Train", but the eventual film was written by Jeff Buhler, so it does not seem any of Rose's ideas made it very far.) Director Bill Condon actually came in late, only a few months before shooting began. By then, it had gone through multiple drafts and at least three writers (after Rose, Rand Ravich and Mark Kruger were on board). Condon shared an agent with Clive Barker, which helped get him in the director's chair. As he puts it, he was in "movie jail" and had been stuck making made-for-TV movies for a few years. (As of 2016, he has become wildly successful with "Dreamgirls" and some "Twilight" films, just to name a few.) As for the setting, after Cabrini Green, where do you go? Well, there is another impoverished place where the desperate might believe in Candyman: New Orleans. And, this film offers him an origin story that was barely "fleshed" out in the first film. Perhaps we can feel some sympathy for this monster? Although not as strong as the original, this is a solid sequel that keeps the same feel and relies heavily on the same Phil Glass theme music (much of the original soundtrack is carried over). The sequel is more traditional in its approach to horror, being more of a slasher than a mood, and where Candyman was something of a myth in the first film, we now know he truly exists as a flesh and blood being. The mirror theme is brought back, both literally and in new, subtle ways. The lead character has trouble painting her self-portrait… this is, in a way, the failure to see herself in a mirror.There are a few too many jump or "bus" scares, but also plenty of decent gore shots for those who need the blood. Roger Ebert noted this, writing, "It's got one of those soundtracks where everyday sounds are amplified into gut-churning shockaramas, and where we are constantly being startled by false alarms." Even Condon concedes the point; he calls them "boo" scares, and is sort of embarrassed about them in retrospect, not realizing how they might play outside of a theater audience.The film has something to say on race and slavery, though it is not heavy-handed about it. So far as I know, Candyman is the first black horror villain to have a sequel since Blacula. With the third installment, he may be the only black horror icon ever to have three films. Although not black myself, it is interesting how the black community has latched on to Tony Todd as their horror icon – conventions that are typically 90% white male have a bit more color when Todd is a guest.As always, Scream Factory provides some great features on their blu-ray for a film that mainstream movie watchers would not think was worth the trouble. The Bill Condon audio commentary is very insightful, though Condon does tend to stutter and stammer a bit. Along with that are new interviews, including with the Candyman himself, Tony Todd. He deserves the attention.

Blah. Did they even know they were filming? First Candyman, badass. How you gonna improve on that? Technically speaking the sequel should be about Helen, who defeated him in the first movie. Also, technically the sequel should be in Chicago. OK fine I'll let them do it in New Orleans, as if I have any control over this movie other than not watching it or pressing fast forward, pause or rewind. Yeah, other than that I can't control how this movie was written and neither can you, only the crazy people who made this movie had any control, and y'know, I'll bet while making this movie it's creators probably only had limited control over the project. You struggle in life and then, ultimately, in the end you fail, because in the end we all must fail. Guitar solo.

A good Philip Glass score – albeit one that's rehashed from the original – is the only good thing about this lacklustre sequel that's more like an endless slasher flick than the evocative and atmospheric ghost story of the first film. Here, Candyman is given a back story (and the flashbacks are the only effective part of the production) while going after various characters who may or may not be his own descendants.This is a lifeless and vapid film, one that it's genuinely difficult to watch while keeping your eyes open. Every signposted death is familiar from the original, and no extra lashings of grue are going to change that. The story delivers an uninspiring lead actress (Kelly Rowan) and gives her an equally uninteresting brother (William O'Leary), neither of whom do much to elicit sympathy in the viewer. Tony Todd, of course, is exceptional, but it takes more than a single actor to make a great film.Bill Condon later won plaudits with GODS AND MONSTERS but I found his direction here to be stultifying – and dated in the worst, mid-1990s way. Aside from those aforementioned flashbacks, I can't think of a single moment of life or energy in the entire plot. It's merely uninspired, with Candyman whittling off one character after the other, while way too much time is given to one of those awfully clichéd sub-plots about the police suspecting an entirely innocent victim of the killings. Throwing in some 'name' character actors like Veronica Cartwright and Bill Nunn doesn't soften the experience, either.