Scene Screams is a recurring column that spotlights the scenes in horror that make us scream, whether through fear, laughter, or tears. It examines the most memorable, and often scariest, scenes in horror and what it is about them that makes them get under our skin.
It takes about forty minutes into Bernard Rose‘s Candyman before the eponymous boogeyman, played by Tony Todd, makes his first physical appearance. Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) puts herself at risk in her determined pursuit of the Candyman legend to the point that it summons him, prompting him to take action to preserve his legacy of fear. The first confrontation between the pair takes place nearly halfway through the runtime, but Candyman’s looming presence from the very beginning ensures that wait is never felt.
In true urban legend style, the stories told about Candyman precede him in such a way that we’re terrified of this figure long before he arrives in the flesh. That includes the unnerving story told mere minutes before his arrival, culminating in the movie’s most unsettling scene.
Helen returns alone to Cabrini-Green to further interrogate Anne-Marie McCoy (Vanessa Estelle Williams) on the Candyman myth. Anne-Marie isn’t home, however. Instead, Helen finds young Jake (DeJuan Guy) sitting outside, who’s skeptical of the neighborhood outsider. After some gentle reassurances and promises, Helen convinces Jake to open up about prevalent Candyman fears. More specifically, he tells her a story about a grisly encounter that instilled his fears of Candyman.
Jake takes her to a public restroom and recounts a gruesome story that occurred there. He details a mother who sends her boy to that restroom while she shops in the store across the street. Shortly after, his piercing screams can be heard, and one brave man ventures inside to check on the boy. Seconds later, he runs back out; his hair instantly turned white from fear.
It’s here that the scene cuts from Jake’s solemn storytelling to the gruesome aftermath. The camera pans across a blood-splattered bathroom, a boy wailing on the floor for his mother while clutching his bloodied crotch, then to a toilet smeared and doused in more of his blood.
“They found ‘it’ floating in the toilet.”
The story prompts Helen to investigate the bathroom herself, its walls smeared in feces and that same toilet infested with bees. Rose gives no reprieve for her or the audience, and she’s punished for her curiosity first through a beating, then by summoning Candyman. But it’s Jake’s story that resonates the strongest.
It’s not Helen’s harrowing bathroom encounter that chills, but the implications of Jake’s story. Early in the film, at the beginning of Helen’s deep submersion in the origins of an urban legend, she explains Candyman’s believers to be “attributing the daily horror of their lives to a mythical figure.” Jake is a young boy living in a dangerous neighborhood. A neighborhood where Helen’s colleague Bernadette (Kasi Lemmons) is afraid to come near, citing gunshots that occur daily there. Yet Jake demonstrates deep-seated fear for Candyman, displayed with a maturity that implies his life experiences aged him at a more rapid rate than most children his age.
That’s exacerbated by the very adult story he tells- a child his age suffering most violently, his genitals severed by a hook. Not even the adults in this retelling could handle the sight.
This scene most effectively precedes Candyman’s arrival. More than the clueless and brazen babysitter from the opening sequence. Arguably more than the dinner scene in a restaurant where Candyman’s tragic backstory gets revealed.
It’s the scene that sees a child forced far too soon to confront death. The dread gets compounded in layers, first by Guy’s grave performance in this scene, then by the grotesque visuals of what transpired. Killing or maiming a child makes for one of horror’s biggest taboos, and Rose shatters it with a gut-wrenching scene.
It speaks volumes about the setting, and the power of Candyman’s legend.
Jake’s story hits home the message that no one can escape Candyman’s wrath, not even an innocent. This scene doesn’t just build Candyman’s terrifying presence, but it also foreshadows the kidnapping of baby Anthony while raising the stakes. If Candyman won’t hesitate to maim a child, what chance does a baby have?