Today news: The 33 Most Anticipated TV Shows of Fall 2021

With the rise of the Delta variant of COVID-19, the fate of movies remains uncertain—will studios continue to release new films in theaters? On streaming services? Both? But while you may not have immediate access to some of the most talked-about superhero films and Oscar hopefuls this year, there’s plenty of TV to keep you busy this fall.

Fan-favorite shows like Succession, The Morning Show and Dear White People are set to return after long, pandemic-induced breaks. Meanwhile, this autumn’s TV lineup of new series is particularly star-studded: Clive Owen is taking a turn as Bill Clinton in Impeachment: American Crime Story, Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain are duking it out as an unhappily married couple in Scenes From a Marriage and Michael Keaton and Rosario Dawson are leading an A-list adaptation of Dopesick, the story of how one pharma company jumpstarted the opioid crisis in America.
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And while neither the long-planned Game of Thrones spinoffs nor the much-anticipated Lord of the Rings TV show will debut on the small screen this year, the race for the next hit sci-fi or fantasy series has begun with adaptations of Foundation and The Wheel of Time set to premiere in the next few months, along with a live-action version of the anime series Cowboy Bebop and a reinterpretation of War of the Worlds called Invasion. Those new series will compete with the next two Marvel shows, Hawkeye and Ms. Marvel, the Mandalorian spinoff, The Book of Boba Fett and the second season of the Witcher for genre television supremacy as the holidays approach.

Here are the biggest series you can look forward to for the rest of the year.

What We Do in the Shadows

Sept. 2 on FX

The critically beloved vampire comedy based on Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s film of the same name returns for a third season of bloody fun.

Money Heist

Sept. 3 on Netflix

One of Netflix’s biggest international hits, Spain’s Money Heist promises plenty more twists and turns as the drama about a group of robbers comes to a close in its fifth and final season.

Impeachment: American Crime Story

Sept. 7 on FX

Ryan Murphy’s Emmy-winning anthology will tackle Bill Clinton’s impeachment. The story, produced by Monica Lewinsky, centers largely on her experience. Beanie Feldestein plays Lewinsky alongside an all-star cast that includes Murphy regular Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp, Edie Falco as Hillary Clinton and Clive Owen as the former president.

Scenes From a Marriage

Sept. 12 on HBO

Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain star as a couple struggling to keep their marriage afloat over the course of a decade in a remake of the 1973 miniseries from legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman.

American Rust

Sept. 12 on Showtime

The drama starring Jeff Daniels as a surly Pennsylvania police chief whose infidelity interferes with a murder investigation exudes Mare of Easttown vibes.

Y: The Last Man

Sept. 13 on FX on Hulu

This graphic novel adaptation asks what would happen if all but one man on earth died: Would we live in a dystopia or utopia?

The Lost Symbol

Sept. 16 on Peacock

Robert Langdon, the symbologist hero of Dan Brown’s novels, gets his own origin story. In it, the young academic must solve a series of puzzles to save his mentor.

The Premise

Sept. 16 on FX on Hulu

The Office writer and star B.J. Novak’s anthology series of modern morality tales will explore thorny premises like what one man does when he discovers that the blurry background in his sex tape might provide evidence in a police abuse case. The cast includes Tracee Ellis Ross, Daniel Dae Kim and Jon Bernthal.

The Morning Show

Sept. 17 on Apple TV+

Julianna Margulies and Hasan Minhaj join Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Billy Crudrup for a second season of the series about a morning show reckoning with a #MeToo scandal.

Read More: How Bombshell and The Morning Show Reckon With #MeToo

Sex Education

Sept. 17 on Netflix

In Sex Education’s third season, Girls star Jemima Kirke joins the cast as the high school’s new headmistress trying to rein in rebellious students.

Muhammad Ali

Sept. 19 on PBS

Famed documentarian Ken Burns endeavors to capture the complex life of the iconic boxer and inspirational activist.

Our Kind of People

Sept. 21 on Fox

Lee Daniels’ new drama centers on a rich enclave of Black families in Martha’s Vineyard and recalls the soapy pleasures of Empire.

Dear White People

Sept. 22 on Netflix

In its fourth and final season, Justin Simien’s campus dramedy will still tackle questions of race relations on campus—especially in a moment of continued upheaval. But it will also take the form of a ’90s-inspired musical.

The Wonder Years

Sept. 22 on ABC

Daniels is also producing a reboot of the classic coming-of-age story, this time centered on a Black 12-year-old growing up in 1960s Alabama. Dulé Hill plays the dad, and Don Cheadle narrates.

Foundation

Sept. 24 on Apple TV+

Isaac Asimov’s epic sci-fi trilogy has inspired space stories ranging from Star Trek to Dune. Now it’s finally getting its own adaptation. Lee Pace and Jared Harris star in the show, which centers on a rebellion within the ranks of a galactic empire.

Midnight Mass

Sept. 24 on Netflix

Haunting of Hill House creator Mike Flanagan conjures up another creepy tale, this time about an isolated island beset by supernatural events. Friday Night Lights’ Zach Gilford stars in the series.

BMF

Sept. 26 on Starz

The 50 Cent-produced drama chronicles a tale inspired by the true story of the rise of a criminal empire in Detroit dubbed the Black Mafia Family.

Succession

October TBA on HBO

The beloved HBO dramedy about a Murdoch-esque family and their squabbles over who will rule their media empire finally returns for a third season.

Maid

Oct. 1 on Netflix

Based on Stephanie Land’s popular memoir about poverty in America, Maid stars mother and
daughter Andie McDowell and Margaret Qualley.

Dopesick

Oct. 3 on Hulu

Michael Keaton and Rosario Dawson star in the familiar tale of a pharma company starting a drug epidemic by misrepresenting how addictive OxyContin is.

Queens

Oct. 19 on ABC

The nostalgia for ’90s girls groups that inspired Girls5Eva still has a hold over Hollywood. Queens centers on a girls group that reunites in their 40s to make music again. Real-life ’90s icons Eve and Brandy star.

The Next Thing You Eat

Fernando Leon—Getty ImagesDavid Chang at the TIME 100 Gala celebrating TIME’S 100 Most Influential People In The World in New York City on April 24, 2012.

Oct. 21 on Hulu

Ugly Delicious star and chef David Chang explores the next wave of the food world, from lab-grown fish to insect farms.

Invasion

Oct. 22 on Apple TV+

Inspired by H.G. Wells’ seminal story War of the Worlds, Invasion follows an alien attack on earth, as told from the viewpoints of many characters across several continents.

Taste the Nation: Holiday Edition

Dimitrios Kambouris—Getty Images for Time Padma Lakshmi attends 2016 Time 100 Gala, Time’s Most Influential People In The World red carpet at Jazz At Lincoln Center at the Times Warner Center on April 26, 2016 in New York City.

Nov. 4 on Hulu

Padma Lakshmi’s wonderful food series, Taste the Nation, which spotlights how various immigrant communities shape American food culture, is getting a holiday-centric season this fall. Each episode in the four-part series will highlight a different holiday celebration and all the traditional sustenance that accompanies it, from a Korean New Year’s celebration to a Cuban Christmas party in Miami.

Read More: Cooking in Quarantine With Top Chef Host Padma Lakshmi Means Tasting Many Nations

Dexter: New Blood

Nov. 7 on Showtime

Michael C. Hall returns as the incongruously virtuous serial killer in a 10-episode arc set a decade after the events of the original show. The creators have promised a satisfying coda to the much-maligned series finale.

The Shrink Next Door

Nov. 12 on Apple TV+

Based on a true story and hit podcast, Paul Rudd plays a doctor who takes over all decision-making powers for his meek patient (Will Ferrell).

Cowboy Bebop

Geoffrey Short—NetflixJohn Cho, Mustafa Shakir and Daniella Pineda in Cowboy Bebop

Nov. 19 on Netflix

John Cho stars in the live-action adaptation of the celebrated Japanese anime series about a ragtag group of bounty hunters chasing criminals across space.

Hawkeye

Film Frame/Marvel StudiosHawkeye/Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) in Captain America: Civil War

Nov. 24 on Disney+

The next Marvel Studios show gives center stage to Jeremy Renner’s arrow-slinging superhero and his new protege, played by Hailee Steinfeld.

Read More: How the Black Widow End Credits Scene Sets Up Hawkeye

The Beatles: Get Back

Nov. 25 on Disney+

Peter Jackson is no stranger to spending countless hours in the editing room: his 2018 WW1 documentary They Shall Not Grow Old restored dozens of hours of century-old footage. Now, he helms a three-part documentary culled from 60 hours of never-before-seen footage and 150 hours of unheard audio from the Beatles’ 1969 recording sessions for the album Let It Be.

The Witcher

Katalin Vermes/NetflixHenry Cavill in ‘The Witcher’

Dec. 17 on Netflix

The hit fantasy series starring Henry Cavill as monster hunter Geralt returns for the holidays.

The Book of Boba Fett

Disney+(L-R) Pedro Pascal as The Mandalorian and Temuera Morrison as Boba Fett in LucasFilm’s The Mandalorian

December on Disney+

The first of several planned Mandalorian spinoffs centers on the fan-favorite Star Wars antihero and bounty hunter, Boba Fett.

Read More: The Book of Boba Fett Is The Mandalorian’s First Spinoff Show

Ms. Marvel

Marvel Studios

TBA on Disney+

Marvel’s first Muslim superhero, Kamala Khan, gets her own TV show about surviving high school before she goes on to star in the next Captain Marvel movie, The Marvels.

The Wheel of Time

Mustafa Yalcin—Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesRosamund Pike at the closing ceremony of the 74th annual Cannes Film Festival on July 17, 2021

TBA on Amazon

In an adaptation of Robert Jordan’s popular fantasy series, Rosamund Pike plays a magician in search of a prophesied chosen one.

Today news: How Candyman Reclaims the History of Cabrini-Green

Long before a man with a bloody hook tormented the alleys of Cabrini-Green in the 1992 film Candyman, the Chicago housing projects were understood by many to be a place of horror. For decades, local and national media told stories of murders, rapes, gangs, drugs and poverty run rampant, making it one of the most feared places in America.

But many of the residents who actually lived there felt differently: to them, Cabrini-Green wasn’t just a cesspool of immorality but also a tight-knit, family-oriented community that supported each other in the face of neglect, governmental corruption and police violence. And when filmmaker Nia DaCosta was given a chance to create a sequel to Candyman, she strove to show a different side of the maligned projects; to preserve the scariness of the original film while separating the monster from the community itself. “The original film definitely fed into a fear of the Black community, and the Black man in particular,” DaCosta tells TIME. “I didn’t want to do this approach of, ‘Oh, god, this terrible place where terrible things are happening, because these brutes are living here.’ This is a community that was chronically underserved for a very long time.”
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In anticipation of the film’s release on August 27, TIME talked to filmmakers, historians and community members about the history of Cabrini-Green and Candyman’s role in its lore.

Decades of notoriety

When the Cabrini-Green housing projects started being built in the 1940s, the area’s reputation for violence was long established. In the 19th century, the neighborhood on the north fork of the Chicago River sat next to billowing, stinking gas refineries and factories, and became the landing place for waves of European immigrants searching for cheap housing in the city. The neighborhood soon became known as “Little Hell,” with frequent reports of mafia activity. “There was a mythical quality and almost a Candyman-like aspect of the ways the violence and gangs were described in that time,” Ben Austen, a Chicago journalist who wrote the book High Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing, says.

In 1937, the Chicago Housing Authority was founded to reform these sorts of slums while also combating a severe housing crisis precipitated by the Great Depression. They would soon embark on an ambitious public housing development project that mostly consisted of extremely segregated high rises, pushing Black families—many recent migrants from the South—into a “Black belt” on the city’s South Side. Further “urban renewal” projects and redlining displaced many other city dwellers and forced them into public housing; a 1955 study found that such projects served the interests of wealthy businessmen and institutions to keep public housing out of their wards.

Cabrini-Green, however, was supposed to be different from the others: an integrated, utopian community with affordable rent prices in the heart of the city, not far from Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. In 1942, Mayor Edward J. Kelly proclaimed that the apartments “symbolize the Chicago that is to be,” adding, “We cannot continue as a nation, half slum and half palace.”

But before long, the 3,600 public housing units of Cabrini-Green would soon become almost entirely Black and poor. Funding for upkeep and social services vanished, leaving buildings rotting and full of broken appliances and elevators. Shoddy construction even meant some apartments connected through their bathroom mirrors (a detail that would show up to grisly effect in the original Candyman). With little oversight, city-wide gangs like Vice Lords and Cobras moved in and warred with each other. In 1982, a study from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found that the Chicago Housing Authority was one of the worst-managed public housing agencies in the nation.

It was this Cabrini-Green, in 1979, that the six-year-old Teddy Williams moved into with his mother and siblings. Williams says that the project’s reputation initially made his family scared to move there. He recalls: “The feedback that my grandmother got about Cabrini-Green made her leery about her daughter and grandchildren moving there. We connected with the same fears and were like, ‘Oh my god. Will it be bad?’”

Those fears were assuaged when the residents there quickly welcomed them into the fold. “It was like a little village: everybody knew everybody,” he says. “There was gang activity, but also a lot of structure amongst others that weren’t involved: after school programs where they’d have games, trampolines, screen painting, quilt sewing. We put on dance routines and dressed up like the zombies in the Thriller video.”

Among the children in Cabrini-Green, there was certainly mythology about menaces, including a crazy man who lived on the otherwise-deserted 14th floor where the elevator would sometimes accidentally drop people off. (“If we had to get off on that floor, we would run really quick before he came out,” Williams says.) But a more frequent threat was the police, who were essentially engaged in warfare with the gangs in Cabrini-Green after two cops were shot dead by a sniper in 1970. “The police were kind of aggressive: I do remember some harsh moments,” he says. “When it came to police presence and gang members, it wasn’t a, ‘Go over, talk to you, and do an intervention’ kind of thing. It was, “We go over there, strong arm you and make you act right.’”

Cabrini-Green wasn’t the poorest, or the most crime-ridden, neighborhood. But its proximity to wealthier sections of the city made it a target for not only the police, but the local and national news. (Its status as the setting of the film Cooley High and the TV show Good Times also increased general interest.) Newspapers and television crews would swarm in, hoping to capture stories of gore and poverty porn—and Cabrini-Green developed a reputation as one of America’s worst projects. On Saturday Night Live, Danitra Vance, the first Black female cast regular, played a 17-year-old mother of two named Cabrini-Green Jackson. (Vance later quit the show, frustrated after repeatedly being assigned stereotypical roles.) In 1981, Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne actually moved into Cabrini-Green to signal her commitment to the area—but she moved out within weeks, with the crime rate unaffected, and was voted out of office two years later.

Pix/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)Cabrini-Green in 1966.

The original Candyman and the razing of Cabrini-Green

Cabrini-Green essentially symbolized the plight of the American inner city—and in 1990, the English filmmaker Bernard Rose decided to capitalize on that reputation by transposing a short story by Clive Barker about a monster in the Liverpool slums to Cabrini-Green. His film followed Helen Lyle, a white woman, who ventured into the ghetto to research an urban legend about a hook-handed spirit who kills anyone who says his name five times into a mirror. Rose spoke to residents and actually filmed in Cabrini-Green, and ultimately created an atmosphere in which the streets were lined with garbage, feces was smeared on restroom mirrors, and vicious attackers popped out of the shadows and the walls.

Residents of Cabrini-Green and other low-income areas of the city viewed the film with both reverence and frustration. Some loved it, including J. Nicole Brooks, who would go onto act in the new Candyman and also write a play about Jane Byrne’s foray into Cabrini-Green, Her Honor, Jane Byrne. “It’s like asking a Chicagoan about Michael Jordan,” she says. “It was beautifully shot, thoughtfully done and terrifying.”

Brooks also says the mythology at the center of the film was not dissimilar to stories she heard growing up living right outside the Robert Taylor Homes, a housing project on the south side. “The folklore could actually save your life,” she says. “For example, ‘Do not go under the viaduct west of Comiskey Park unless there’s a White Sox Game.’ You grew up thinking the boogie man was all over Chicago—and for the most part, it was true.”

Others were wary about the way that the film fed into prevailing stereotypes about public housing. “Projects were so misunderstood and vilified,” the Chicago-based author and scholar Ytasha Womack says. “Their vilification was almost a reflection of the failures of social services to help support people when they were put in those places.”

Teddy Williams saw the film while living in Cabrini-Green, and says that conversations he had about the film at the time there were mostly positive. “I think the community was mostly okay with the movie, because it put us on the map again,” he says. “The only thing we would talk about is that Candyman could never live over here and do what he was doing, because he would get f-cked up.”

Candyman opened on Oct 16, 1992. Three days prior, the 7-year-old Dantrell Davis was shot to death by a local gang member in Cabrini-Green while walking to school. The incident made national headlines and shook the community to its core, with local gangs entering a truce. The historian Ben Austen says that the combination of those two concurrent events only exacerbated anxious views from public officials about the inner city that were circulating at the time—and could have played an implicit role in the demolishing of Cabrini-Green. “This is the same time as the crack epidemic, the image of gangs wilding in Central Park, John DiIulio talking about superpredators,” he says. “This mythology takes real world effect and shapes policy—and we get isolation, demolition and mass incarceration.”

In 1999, Chicago Mayer Richard M. Daley and the Chicago Housing Authority kicked off a $1.6 billion Plan For Transformation, in which they sought to rip down public housing across the city, build or rehabilitate 25,000 new public units, and turn the land over to eager developers. Daley said that that mixed-income would take the place of slums and said of the relocated, “I want to rebuild their souls.”

But historians and community members say that the transition was mishandled. “It was a human rights disaster,” Austen says. Residents were forced out of the homes and support systems that had kept them upright for decades; the section eight vouchers they received often pushed them to poorer, more segregated areas of the city. And despite all the headlines about Cabrini-Green being an uninhabitable place, a group of residents actually unsuccessfully sued to stay there.

One of the residents who hoped to stay was Williams. When his tower came down in 2011, he didn’t receive a voucher, since he was living with his mother at the time. Unsure of where to go, Williams says he was homeless for about three years, staying on the couches of friends and family or riding the trains. He got a job as a barber and slept in the salon basement until he was able to afford his own place; he now lives in Oak Park, Illinois. “It was kind of a rough transition,” he says.

The area is now gentrified, covered with gleaming offices and condos and fancy restaurants. While Mayor Daley said that the new developments would include plenty of affordable housing for residents to return to the neighborhood, the 15,000 promised family units in the city overall pale in comparison to the city’s actual need. When the CHA opened its public-housing waiting list in 2010, more than 215,000 families applied.

“It was just like, ‘We’re going to bring upper class people here—we don’t need riffraff around here, causing trouble,’’” Williams says.

Tim Boyle/Getty ImagesResidents walk past one of the few remaining Chicago Housing Authority Cabrini-Green public housing buildings in 2005.

Reclaiming history through film

The filmmaker Nia DaCosta isn’t from Chicago; she grew up in Harlem, and says that seeing Candyman as a child was “the first time that what was happening in a horror film could absolutely happen to me. Candyman was actually just over there, across the street.”

But even though there were similarities between Harlem and Cabrini-Green, DaCosta made it an utmost priority of her Candyman sequel to learn about the neighborhood’s specific history through historians and residents. DaCosta says that she and her team talked to dozens of locals about their experiences, who emphasized similar aspects as Teddy Williams did—of pride and community. “We wanted to take that pride and expand it as opposed to chip away at it,” DaCosta says. “We wanted to show this amazing sense of community and the way people took care of each other and looked after each other. And even when we introduce Candyman, it’s not the monster we think it is.”

Candyman was shot on-location, including in some Cabrini-Green row-houses that are still standing. (They also used CGI to recreate the torn-down towers.) “There are certainly places you can use to fake Chicago, and shoot something that would be more inexpensive,” Win Rosenfield, a co-writer and co-producer on the film, says. “But that was never a question. We always felt it was important that this film, like its predecessor, live in Cabrini-Green and relate to the people of Chicago in an intimate way.”

So, the film’s cast includes local actors, like J. Nicole Brooks; presents explicit conversations about gentrification, erasure and neglect; and also mentions the names embedded in Cabrini-Green’s history, including Dantrell Davis and Girl X, who was raped and tortured in Cabrini-Green in 1997. Their names are invoked by the character William Burke, who laments how their stories have been forgotten before referring to the Candyman character Helen Lyle: “A white woman dies and the story lives on forever.”

“When people think about Cabrini-Green, they think about this fake thing as opposed to the real children who were harmed there,” DaCosta says. “Fiction tends to spread farther than nonfiction—and as a filmmaker, it’s important to be cognizant of not perpetuating the same old stories.”

One way that DaCosta tried to tell a real story of erasure embedded in her genre piece was by shooting at the Northside Stranger’s Home Missionary Baptist Church on the corner of Clybourn Avenue and Larrabee Street. It once was a flourishing community center that displayed a vibrant 1972 mural called “All of Mankind” by William Walker, a Chicagoan known as the father of the urban art movement.

But once the neighborhood started to change, the church lost its constituency and was shuttered. In 2015, the lot went up for sale for potential use as a single-use family home, and the mural was whitewashed over, to the dismay of preservationists. In 2018 the lot sold for $750,000 to a private bidder. But before it was converted, the new owners allowed DaCosta to shoot inside the church for Candyman’s pivotal scene.

“It was completely rundown and toxic fumes and mold and all this terrible stuff,” DaCosta says. “Part of the reason why we wanted to shoot there was because we’d seen these amazing pictures of the beautiful mural, and people on the right outside in their Sunday best. It really was a symbol of what had been erased. “

DaCosta hopes that her new Candyman will both provide big scares in theaters while also forcing audience goers to reckon with the impacts of displacement and gentrification. Meanwhile, in real life, some of the old residents of Cabrini-Green have been able to move back into the newly refurbished neighborhood—but say they face discrimination and complaints from the new, wealthier residents. Many more are still shut out, including Williams, who is holding out hope that he might be able to someday return. “Even though it had rough patches, we had love for our community,” he says. “Even if they didn’t upgrade anything, I wouldn’t mind going back to my neighborhood.”

Today news: Candyman Teases Out New Relevance From a ‘90s Horror Classic

Sometimes a movie arrives at just the right time, as if it were reading society’s collective mind. Candyman, directed by Nia DaCosta, and written by DaCosta, Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld, is one of those movies, a story rippling with ideas that many thinking people are already grappling with—or at least have finally become aware of.

This isn’t a remake of the 1992 film, directed by Bernard Rose and starring Virginia Madsen; instead, its creators have called it “a spiritual sequel,” a description that fits the bill. If the earlier movie featured a white woman “trying to understand” certain fears and coping mechanisms in a specific Black community—Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects, whose demolition began in 1995—it was still almost all about her. The figure at the heart of this new Candyman, which uses the earlier film as a foundation, is an up-and-coming Chicago painter, Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who’s struggling to find his voice as an artist and yearning for recognition. His sudden obsession with the urban legend Candyman jolts his canvases to life—though it may not be the kind of life he wants.
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If you’ve never seen the original film, you may have no idea who Candyman is. In that case, the only directive is to never say his name five times while looking in the mirror, or he’ll appear behind you, a murderous-seeming Black man in a long coat, with a hook where his right hand should be. Though this figure is fearsome—invented at least partly, so the lore goes, to keep kids on their best behavior—his story, as Rose’s movie first outlined it, is tragic: He’s the ghost of a man who was murdered by white people in the 1890s because he dared to fall in love with a white woman. The new Candyman expands on that premise: there are actually many Candymen who were similarly murdered, and who return in this particular form to wreak vengeance. As a local laundromat proprietor William Burke (Colman Domingo), who had his own run-in with Candyman as a child, explains to Anthony, “Candyman is how we deal with the fact that these things happened. That they’re still happening.”

Universal Pictures Colman Domingo in Candyman

Candyman spins out a lot of ideas at once: Anthony lives with his girlfriend, Brianna (Teyonah Parris), who’s a massively successful art curator. Their home is a jaw-dropping luxury loft that she pays for, and Abdul-Mateen conveys, subtly, how this rankles Anthony’s masculine pride. He wants to make his own way, and he yearns for success—things any artist might want, but a longing that’s likely even more pronounced among Black artists and other people of color.

Anthony’s fame escalates after one of his paintings plays a role in the death of a gallery owner; he knows he’s becoming famous for the wrong reasons, but he’ll take it anyway. And though he’s trim and handsome at the beginning of the story—he has plenty of time to work out—Anthony’s frame becomes more lumbering and twisted as his Candyman obsession intensifies. There’s a fair amount of body horror here, beginning with a bee-stung hand that continues to fester and flake. And if the plot is perhaps slightly overcomplicated, it’s for the most part thoughtfully worked out. It also makes room for actor Tony Todd, reprising the role he played in the earlier film, a respectful nod to the way movies take root in our consciousness.

Periodically throughout the movie, the Candyman legend is unfurled for us in a series of beautifully executed sequences of shadow puppetry. These mini plays-within-the-play, created by Chicago collective Manual Cinema and evoking the bracing silhouette work of Kara Walker, as well as the delicate innovations of animator Lotte Reiniger, are both discreet and direct in the way they depict the atrocities suffered by the men who will ultimately take the form of Candyman. Simultaneously captivating and mournful, they’re so effective they could constitute a mini-movie by themselves. Candyman is a work held together by thoughtful choices, and it has a lot to say. Genre conventions are themselves like urban legends, a framework that each new generation adds to and builds upon. Candyman is just one reason we continue to believe in them.