10 More Horror Movies Where Pranks Brutally Backfired

Nia DaCosta achieved the unexpected by bringing Candyman back from the grave in 2021, revitalising the character with a new actor, a new time and a new racial politics. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II's Anthony McCoy joins the hive and sinks his hook into gentrification and generational trauma, while all around him people refuse to believe Candyman is anything but a Black myth.

Amongst them are a troupe of Gen Z high schoolers, who by this point really ought to know better. Far from the first to the proverbial chopping block, Candyman's death toll is rising when minor character Haley (Heidi Grace Engerman) pranks her friends into saying “Candyman” five times in the mirror to try and scare them. And, boy, does it ever go sideways real quick.

In a genre-defining scene that led the marketing of the film, the girls are massacred one by one in the school bathroom, drawing together all of horror's most effective tools - off-screen kills, thumping doors, blood splatters, further mirror shots and obscured images of the killer - with the gravest of consequences for everyone involved.