Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh

The script is constructed too much like a novel, which slows the pace of the early, establishing sections. Director Bill Condon works too hard to tie all the plot strands into a neat bow. Read full review

The movie doesn't develop, alas, with the patience and restraint of the earlier film. Read full review

Since Barker’s baroque prose visions are too complex for the gore-hound market, they’re bound to be watered down into this kind of bilge. Read full review

Director Bill Condon has a sense of style but a heavy hand with actors -- you can all but hear them telling themselves to hit their marks and punch out their lines. [20 Mar 1995, p.F2]

Once again, Philip Glass composes one of his insistent scores -- and again the effect is pretentious, considering the circumstances. Director Bill Condon has a sense of style but a heavy hand with actors -- you can all but hear them telling themselves to hit their marks and punch out their lines. [17 Mar 1995, p.H28]

Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh is a just-better-than-routine horror sequel that watches in chilly admiration as some sort of apparition steps out of mirrors and performs atrocities on the unwary. [17 Mar 1995]

Producer Barker (who is only credited with the story idea for the original), director Bill Condon (filling in for the original's Bernard Rose) and his writers have crammed this movie so full of killings and razzle-dazzle MTV imagery that it has very little of what made the first Candyman so effective: genuine suspense. [17 Mar 1995]

Mostly, however, Candyman: Farewell To The Flesh is content to rely on easy jolts and an overabundance of fake-out scares, rather than hard-earned suspense. It’s never awful, but it also never feels necessary. Mostly, it proves that even the most innovative horror concepts can find ways to spin their wheels. Read full review

Fortunately, Candyman isn't powerful enough to do much harm. The credits are more intriguing than the film. Read full review

This lackluster sequel forgoes everything that made the original a superior horror film in favor of simplistic genre cliches. Read full review

Nowhere near as creepy as the original, nor as effective a scarer. Read full review