This trailer really irritates me because it’s a perfect example of having one’s cake and eating it too.

If you recall Clive Barker’s The Forbidden (as well as Bernard Rose’s adaptation, Candyman (1992)) the idea was originally that the ‘monster’ had his origins in Slavery, which made him not only poignant, but his creation well within a certain logic (after all, the cruelty of slave masters were renown).

Taking that and transferring it to a modern context – without drastically changing the character – does not work because it loses that logic.

Why would the police cut off someone’s hand and replace it with a hook?

Heck, why would ANY child growing up in the projects take candy from someone they didn’t know (short of Halloween, and even then reluctantly)? Unlike what this trailer implies, children aren’t stupid and anyone walking around the projects trying to give children candy would very soon have to deal with their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters of said children, never mind the police.

Which would pretty much guarantees that you’d eventually have one less stranger giving out candy to anyone.

Though the story seems to be working too hard to restore racial animus as a motivation – he was murdered by a white lynch mob in the movie – despite the fact that in the context of the reboot it (making it seemingly a white mob of policemen) makes no sense.

Remember I mentioned the inhabitants of the housing complex rising up against someone they perceived as a threat to their children?

There’s your movie. You could even have the victim trying to escape, only to met with apathy by the police (who for our example would be white) or they might even become part of the mob, in an effort to ingratiate themselves within the community that till that time appeared hostile to them.

There’s the racial animus angle, restored.

It’s a great looking trailer though and something I’m likely to see if only to learn that maybe there’re more wrinkles to his origin than revealed by the trailer.