Three Films Make A Post: Say It.

Candyman (2021): For its first two thirds, I was all in with Nia DaCosta’s sequel to Bernard Rose’s masterpiece. There’s strong acting, interesting conceptual decisions when it comes to the nature of Candyman as a myth, exposition done via awesome shadow puppet animation, and some heavily moody and macabre filmmaking that turns rote killings (quite appropriately) into art. Sure, from time to time, the film does tend to wear its politics on its sleeves a bit too much if you’ve ever heard of the concept of subtlety or complexity, but not in a way that isn’t also rather appropriate to the material, like it or not.

Alas, the third act is a total mess where having characters being responsible for their own doom, or even just making actual decisions is sacrificed on the altar of the plot twist, and where the film we were watching until then becomes overwhelmed by the pointless need to tie it in tighter with the original Candyman, which does rob the film we are actually watching of much of the power it had until then.

There’s Someone Inside Your House (2021): Warning, I’m going to spoil the identity of the killer here. So, to my taste, this rework of teen slasher tropes for the woke era and Netflix as directed by Patrick Brice does woke horror (this is a genre now, surely) rather more effectively than Candyman does, particularly since it doesn’t go off the rails during its third act quite as much but escalates dramatically and emotionally, using the way it has fleshed out its character tropes in the first two acts to connect characters and audience. Which, obviously, makes its climax emotionally and dramatically much more satisfying than one in which the main characters get to do sod all. On the way, there are some fine and clever ideas on how to fuse classic teen horror tropes with modern sensibilities, and some nicely staged suspense. The only element that did tend to irritate me is the identity of the killer, who is of course the psychologically messed up white rich kid who hates his (totally hateable) father, or rather, that the film seems to argue that growing up rich somehow robs one of one’s humanity so much, one isn’t allowed to have emotional damage, which does mar a film that otherwise is all about compassion and understanding for damage and guilt by being total bullshit.

Black as Night (2021): Keeping with woke teen horror, this Amazon and Blumhouse teens versus vampires in New Orleans film (starring Asjha Cooper who is one of the secondary leads of There’s Someone) as directed by Maritte Lee Go is a fun enough time. The sense of place is quite strong, its political ideas are slightly more complicated than those of There’s will turn out in the end, and some of the vampire lore and set pieces are pretty neatly conceived too.

It is, however, a bit of a flabby movie even with a length of less than ninety minutes. So expect awkward things like the film suddenly adding some good vampires to the mix shortly before the climax only to do very little of consequence with them.