Candyman

Despite the fact that this is based on a very solid short story by Clive Barker, Candyman is a tremendous letdown: it's all bark and no bite, full of the vacuous sound and fury that denotes a film with a serious identity crisis. Set in Chicago's infamous Cabrini-Green (perhaps best known as the housing project with the highest murder rate per square foot in North America), Madsen plays a graduate student caught up in the urban folklore of her blighted city. There's too much going on here, and little if any explanation as to the why's and wherefore's of the rationale behind the horrors we keep witnessing. Director Rose seems not to know what to show next, and whether this is in an effort to keep his audience guessing or not, it only ends up making what could have been an exceptionally disturbing film exceptionally annoying.