How ‘Candyman’ Special Makeup Effects Designer J. Anthony Kosar Revived a Horror Icon and Induced Trypophobia [Exclusive]

In Nia DaCosta‘s Candyman, Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) undergoes a gruesome and startling transformation when bitten by a bee in Cabrini-Green. The urban legend of Candyman rises once again, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. Special Makeup Effects Designer J. Anthony Kosar (Lovecraft Country, Fargo tv series) and his team were responsible for bringing multiple iterations of Candyman to life on screen, including that gnarly transformation that triggers the trypophobia, as well as the gore.

For the Chicago native and award-winning artist, getting to work on a reimagining of Candyman was a dream come true. Kosar chatted with Bloody Disgusting to break down the various stages of Anthony McCoy’s transition into Candyman, tackling Sherman and Candyman’s victims, and shares exclusive behind-the-scenes photos on the process.

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The Stages of Candyman

Kosar worked with DaCosta and producer Ian Cooper to figure out what Anthony’s transition would be and look like. It begins small, with a single bee sting, then it slowly takes over his body. That meant quite a few stages of makeup for Kosar and his team to tackle. 

Kosar breaks down the five stages: “It was quite a bit. I’m pretty sure all the stages made it in, to some degree. The first bee sting, which was just a little tiny welt, there was a 1.1 and a 1.2, as it got a little bit more filled with puss. Stage two spread a little bit bigger and was starting to erupt in different blisters. Stage three was the one that we saw quite a bit where it was a big, giant scab. That’s the scab I ended up picking off, which became 3.2. Then stage four is when he wakes up after he has an argument with Teyonah’s character in his studio. He wakes up on the floor and pulls his fingernail off. Then, it is all the way up his arm and starting to go up the side of his face. So, that was four. Five was the final stage right before his arm came off, which was completely deteriorated and rotten.”

Kosar continues, “The arm was pretty much dead at that point. So, that was five stages with a couple of tweaks to some of those stages. Then, as far as the honeycomb, that started progressing up the side of Anthony’s face. We had stages of that. One, you see just a little bit. It was on his arm, chest, and shoulder, his neck, and just on his jawline, which we saw when he was talking to his mother. Stage three was pretty much the final Candyman look when it fully took over him in the chapel. That went all the way to his entire arm, chest, shoulder, part of his back, and the entire side of his face with, complete with contacts and everything.”

Because productions rarely ever shoot scenes sequentially, that made adhering to continuity tricky for Kosar. The artist explained, “They’re constantly bouncing scenes. Even some days, we’re putting one layer on, and then we have to pull it back to do the other stage previous to that, or completely remove it to do something before you even go the bee sting completely. So, it was a lot of really analyzing the script, going through the call sheet, and seeing what was required for that day. And, also working closely with the director Nia and Adam [Druxman], who was the first AD, and helped keep everything organized and on task, so we know exactly what stages we have to do per the day.

“I think one of my favorite makeups that I’ve done to date is the final stage of Yahya with the full Candyman makeup.”

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Candyman’s Trypophobia-Inducing Honeycomb Skin

The final stage includes the honeycomb effect on Anthony’s torso, which looked so realistic that it triggered trypophobia for many viewers. That look was something that was settled upon pretty early on, Kosar revealed. “Before I had gotten onto the project, they had done some character designing with Aaron Sims. He’s an incredible character designer. I’ve been a fan of his since I got into the industry. So, it was cool to be able to work with some of his designs. I got to design a lot of the hand stuff that was traveling up his arm, and then the final Candyman look was based on his design. Then, having to incorporate and interpret that into prosthetics and sculptural form was pretty interesting in figuring out how best to translate that. So, that was pretty much decided when I got on the project, and it was just trying to develop that into a practical makeup effects way.”

Kosar anticipated that the design would cause physical revulsion for some. “I knew that this was going to trigger people to the extreme because we’re doing it as such a big magnitude that almost half his upper torso and face are filled with these honeycomb-shaped holes. Different sizes, but like erupting from underneath the skin. So, we were anticipating that it was going to have a pretty gruesome effect.”

When asked how he made the holes look so realistic, Kosar answered, “I mean, that’s the fun and the beauty of special effects makeup; it’s an illusion that you’re adding depths, but it’s the trickery of the eye. But the makeup was generally pretty thin. At the thickest portion, I mean, it might be only a quarter of an inch thick because we want to keep it like it is his skin. If we go too thick, then people are going to notice. But a lot of it is just trickery of the eye with sculpting and how you can achieve it with casting the correct shadows and things like that. Enhancing that with paint is how these effects work, you know? I can’t even remember how many pieces he had. He had one entire prosthetic on his arm for the dead fingers. We added components that had a missing fingernail or a cut on the other side of his hand. He had a whole shoulder piece that had a bunch of small transfers to start blending it smaller into the skin as it began to disappear a little bit into the other parts of his skin that weren’t affected. He had a whole side of the face and then a bunch of smaller transfers that we’re starting to carry on the other side too. So, there were quite a bit of pieces that we made just for that makeup. It was about a four-hour application.

“It would start out with Anna Cali and me applying all the main pieces, the shoulder, the face, the arm. Then, once we got to a certain point, my third makeup artist, Clare [Ramsey], would finish the arm and start going down the fingers while we were finishing the chest and the face. Meanwhile, I had some assistants who were prepping transfer pieces so that they could hand them off to us, and then we can continue applying to keep that progress going as fast as we could.”

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The Other Candyman: Sherman

Candyman opens with a tragedy; the cruel death of Sherman Fields (Michael Hargrove), falsely blamed for crimes he didn’t commit. It earned him a spot in history as another Candyman. Kosar and his crew were responsible for bringing this different Candyman to life as well. Kosar shared, “Sherman was an interesting one because he went through a few stages with the designing and what we landed on was what you saw in the film. Because he’s just fully beaten, and they wanted to keep it almost hauntingly beaten, you know? It went through a few stages. The first stage never it into the sculpting or prosthetic phase. But the first sculpture based on the first design was a little closer to what we ended up with. Just this lopsided, beaten up, swollen look with some small minor cuts. A second stage we did was a full, swollen face, almost completely symmetrical. And we ran with that.

“For the reshoot, we went back to the original concept. We ended up doing more of the lopsided asymmetrical, beaten-up face, but with an insane gash on the top of the head and part of his jaw ripped and cut all the way up the face. It was a lot more extreme than either of the other two designs. It was my favorite of the designs. I’m thrilled that that’s what we landed on. We were excited too, that when he’s in the elevator, they get up close and personal, that prosthetic makeup.”

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The Gore and Candyman’s Victims

Even when Candyman’s victims are claimed off-screen, Kosar and his team approached all victims the same just in case. Kosar explained, “From the beginning, most kills were set to happen either in the shadows or off-screen. Jordan Peele’s approach to horror is that things from a distance are scarier than things up close. I know that he really, really embraced that too and wanted to keep it that level of scary. 

“We did full prosthetics on quite a few guys. Clive, the gallery owner, had an entire chest prosthetic that was completely torn open and even had hair punched into it and everything to kind of match him and what we would see. We plan to see it; you never really know how things are going to be shot, so we like to be prepared in that case. Jerrica, his intern who had her throat torn, was rigged to bleed with blood tubing, and we worked with the special effects department for blood to gush out of her neck. We were really excited to see that on camera. 

“Then, the three cops at the end, one of them had his throat torn. One guy had his jaw, was like stumbling out of the apartment. He had his jaw completely torn. He was rigged to bleed. So, he was bleeding as he was walking. The cop in the background also had a torn chest that was made to fit that character. They were still in the background, all full prosthetics.”

As an effects artist, Kosar knows that not all of his work makes it to the screen. “There were things that didn’t make the movie, like some of the cops and some background characters. Or, Clive, you don’t see too much the prosthetics. But, again, we’re just a part of the storytelling.”

We’ll have more genre effects work to look forward to from Kosar in the future; the artist shared that he’s working on upcoming series adaptations of The Shining Girls and Paper Girls next.

Candyman is currently available on PVOD and is coming to DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K Ultra HD on November 16.