Welcome to the 31 Days of Halloween in Movies.

🦇 Well, hello there. It’s one more week until Halloween, and I’m excited.  Not for any particular reason, just because I’m allowed to.  We’ve been enjoying some fun Fall-O-Ween things like picking out pumpkins and walking the neighborhood to check out everyone’s decorations, book sales, Fall drinks, and all the corny stuff I said …no, not me, that I’m doing just because it feels good. LOL

It’s day 25 in the 31 Days of Halloween: Movie Edition, where I recommend one movie every day for October. 🍂💀🎃 Thank you so much for checking out this post today, and without further ado…and so it goes. 

Halloween Quote
“It’s Halloween …everyone is entitled to one good scare”. [Sherif Bracket, Halloween]

For an archive of Days 1-24, click here. Check out the freebies page for all the free downloads, games, and other Halloween fun.

Here are the latest quizzes …

Horror Movie Quotes Quiz
A Nightmare On Elm Street Quiz 
Guess The Modern Horror Novel
Name That Killer Quiz

Today’s Feature

MOVIE: Candyman 
Rated: R
Year: 2021
Director: Nia DeCosta
IMBD Rating: 5.9
Runtime: 1h 31m
Tomato Meter: 84% 🍅
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Kill Meter: 💀💀💀💀🔪🔪🔪🔪

SYNOPSIS: For as long as residents can remember, the housing projects of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green neighborhood were terrorized by a word-of-mouth ghost story about a supernatural killer with a hook for a hand, quickly summoned by those daring to repeat his name five times into a mirror. In the present day, a decade after the last of the Cabrini towers were torn down, visual artist Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and his partner, gallery director Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris), move into a luxury loft condo in Cabrini now gentrified beyond recognition and inhabited by upwardly mobile millennials.

With Anthony’s painting career on the brink of stalling, a chance encounter with a Cabrini-Green old-timer (Colman Domingo) exposes Anthony to the tragically horrific nature of the true story behind Candyman. Anxious to maintain his status in the Chicago art world, Anthony begins to explore these macabre details in his studio as fresh grist for paintings, unknowingly opening the door to a complex past that unravels his sanity and unleashes a terrifying wave of violence that puts him on a collision course with destiny. (Rotten Tomatoes)

MY RATING: (★★★★★) OK….when I saw the first Candyman in theaters back in 1992, it was terrifying, and I want to give props to the original for being that beast. The premise around this movie, the tenement apartment (where Good Times was filmed at the infamous Caprini Green), weighed heavy on my brain.  The “boogieman” and how you call to him, and the lore behind how he came to be.

This movie is graphic; you will see things, but you will also hear a great story that’s well done and touches on African Americans’ fear regarding ghost stories and lore, how we listened to our elders and did what we were told. It also shows that “we” don’t play with that foolishness, which means that we are not conjuring, calling, doing seances, or any of that because we believe that these things are real and not to be tampered with.

The most prominent theme in this movie is gentrification and how most major cities are shutting down affordable housing for the people that need it and selling out to investors who then, in turn, build expensive housing and boutique stores to which now the people that were initially being uprooted can no longer afford.

This is not something baked up in the minds of screenwriters. This is something that’s happening right now.  Housing is so expensive in DC (where I live) that people (literally) can’t find decent, safe places to live.  I don’t mean studio rents at $1600; try $3400 for a studio apartment …now that’s real.  But I’m getting on a rant about that whole subject.  I hope you get to check out this movie horror movie, and for lovers of the genre …you will be in for a ride.

With that said … Happy Viewing, and enjoy the movie!

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