Jordan Peele

Nope

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OJ on horseback

Nope is what you say when heroics are required but you’ve decided on an impulse that absolutely no way are you going to do what’s required. Maidens to be saved, beasts to be slain or dim passageways to be entered, whatever it is, the answer is no. Nope is also the return to form for Jordan Peele, the actor turned director whose conceptually brillant Get Out – Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner done as a horror movie – was followed up by the less conceptually innovative but nonetheless very tidy Us. Nope is Jaws done as a sci-fi, a tale of a big something lurking somewhere out “there” in the sky somewhere and … Read more

Candyman

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Anthony looks in the mirro

Gory but not too scary, 2021’s Candyman is a direct sequel to 1992’s Candyman, which means it builds on the narrative and the lore of the first film rather than the 1995 and 1999 sequels. It also builds on the lore and narrative of Tony Todd’s Candyman, the first mainstream black horror whacko, someone to be pitched alongside Freddie Kruger or Leatherface in a nightmare beauty pageant. Clive Barker wrote the original story, The Forbidden, and set the action in rundown Liverpool. Bernard Rose relocated the whole thing to Cabrini-Green in rundown Chicago for the 1992 version he adapted and directed, reshaping the story to his liking – for example, in Barker’s version … Read more