For as long as residents can remember, the housing projects of Chicago’s Cabrini Green neighbourhood were terrorised by a word-of-mouth ghost story about a supernatural killer with a hook for a hand, easily summoned by those daring to repeat his name five times into a mirror.
In present day, a decade after the last of the Cabrini towers were torn down, visual artist Anthony McCoy (Abdul-Mateen II, Us) and his girlfriend, gallery director Brianna Cartwright (Parris, If Beale Street Could Talk), move into a luxury loft condo in Cabrini, now gentrified beyond recognition and inhabited by upwardly mobile millennials. With Anthony’s painting career on the brink of stalling, a chance encounter with a Cabrini Green old-timer exposes Anthony to the tragically horrific nature of the true story behind Candyman.
Rising filmmaker Nia DaCosta directs this contemporary incarnation of the cult classic.