And she heard this banging and smashing like somebody was trying to make a hole in the wall. Thematically, though, it’s the same move as the street-level shots of skyscrapers, because it’s the mirror image of an early scene in the original movie, in which a university cleaning woman tells Virginia Madsen a different urban legend:Īll I know is there was some lady in a tub and she heard a noise. Reimagining that story as one in which the community of Cabrini-Green came together, fought off an intruder, and saved a baby’s life is exactly what you’d expect to happen over decades of telling and retelling the story, but it’s not much use as exposition. When she realizes Candyman plans for her and the baby to both die in the “annual bonfire”-Guy Fawkes Night, imported from the original short story without explanation-she manages to crawl out of the flames and return the baby to his mother before dying. As Candyman leaves the trail of bodies eventually attributed to Helen (to be fair, she is at least partly responsible for one of the deaths), she spends much of the rest of the movie trying to find that baby, to the point that she agrees to let Candyman sacrifice her in exchange for the baby’s life. Anne-Marie’s dog does get beheaded, but as far as we see, Helen didn’t do it, and Anne-Marie’s baby disappears then, near the beginning of the story, not mid-rampage. In the actual, original movie, after summoning the Candyman, Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) blacks out and wakes up covered in blood in the apartment of Anne-Marie McCoy (Vanessa Williams), a young resident of Cabrini-Green she had spoken with earlier. That’s a good story, but it’s not an accurate version of what happens in Candyman-it’s an urban legend, with all the inaccuracies and embellishments one might expect after 29 years. It’s on that spot that she dies, burns to death, right in the middle of Cabrini-Green. While everyone is fussing over him, Helen stands up and walks right into the fire. They say she was in a fugue state, fighting back blindly, but they got the baby free. Baby in her arms, she runs toward the fire, but they’re on her quick.
On the night of the annual bonfire, with all of the residents of Cabrini watching, Helen arrives with a sacrificial offering. The mother is devastated, everyone is looking for him, and: nothing. She goes on a rampage, leaving a trail of bodies in her wake, and then, the baby of one of the residents is abducted.
… The authorities take her in, but she escapes almost immediately.
By the time the police show up, she’s in one of the apartments making snow angels in a pool of blood. For research, she came down to Cabrini a few times, you know, asking questions, taking pictures of graffiti, people. She was a grad student-a white grad student-doing her thesis on the urban legends out of Cabrini-Green. This is a story about a woman named Helen Lyle.
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