Caroline McKeaver, (Donna D'Erico) an artist, is plagued by nightmares of the Candyman, (Tony Todd) her relative. A painter himself, Caroline's gallery hosts a selection of the Candyman's paintings, which she is against since it turns the paintings into a memorial for his killings. Even though Miguel Velasco, (Mark Adair-Rios) promises keep it about his work, Caroline still feels uneasy about the whole situation. As the gallery opens and the exhibition is scheduled, Caroline is forced to dispel the rumors about the Candyman. When she leaves, she begins to suspect that the Candyman did come back, and that he is targeting her. As her friends around her start dying awful deaths, Caroline finally believes that the Candyman has returned, and she teams up with an old friend (Jsu Garcia) to fight him.

The Good News: The beginning of the movie is really good. Caroline is seen lying in bed, then she goes into the bathroom. After turning off the leaky bathtub faucet, she goes over to the mirror and checks herself. The bathtub starts to leak again, and she looks over at it. A blood drip gets her attention, and she looks at it, then notices the blood is dripping off of a hook. The hook belongs to the Candyman, who then comes after her. It's a real great opening for a movie, and it is suspenseful. The completely white room helps, since this makes the environment sterile automatically, and the red blood and silence of the scene is perfect at drawing suspense. As a matter of fact, the whole movie is great at suspense, as it is a pretty creepy story. There are tons of great scenes where the Candyman appears from out of nowhere and torments Caroline, by graphically killing someone who was already dead. A few of them gave jumps, since the Candyman appears out of nowhere to terrify her. The visions she gets are pretty spooky, and several of them do make you jump. Even several of the graphic deaths are well filmed. Despite the usual hook-into-the-back, we get a great new death: having the hook pierce through the mouth, leaving a giant bloodstain splattering on the windshield. The Candyman then appears to crawl out of the carcass and torment Caroline in the backseat. That also typifies the gore in the film: there isn't much of it, but it looks great. Plus, how can a movie be bad when it features Donna D'Erico in her underwear, even when it opens the movie?

The Bad News: There is a real low body count in the film, as there is only five deaths in the movie. Most of them is a massacre near the end, when the Candyman appears to lay waste to a cult that believes in his spirit. There are a lot of off-camera deaths, but we only get five on-screen. This is due in part to a long second act that is mostly stalking of Caroline, and the Candyman doesn't take the opportunity to go after victims to get his point across. It seems like a mixed blessing: He appears to be more ruthless and scary just slaughtering people, yet stalking them with realistic visions makes him appear smarter. It is a great problem for a film to have. The ending does get a little too sappy, but the way the film was going, there wasn't much choice.

The Final Verdict: It has a lot of great suspense, some good deaths, and a few small jumps. This would be a great movie if it wasn't part of the Candyman legacy, but now, as it is, it isn't a bad slasher. If you can stand a death-less middle act, this is a bad bet if nothing's on or the video store has nothing new.