10 Recent Horror Movie Fates Worse Than Death

When writer-director Nia DaCosta sought to resurrect Candyman, few of us held our breath, suspecting another paint-by-numbers contemporary remake in the vein of 2009's Friday the 13th and 2010's A Nightmare on Elm Street that would add little to the legend and only exist to line studio executives' pockets.

And yet in 2021's Candyman, DaCosta managed to build upon the series' canon without sullying it, and in many places fixing the original films' problems by confronting issues of race and class.

This time around, artist Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is the one caught in Candyman's honey, struggling to break through with his work on one side and, on the other, consumed by an obsession with original victim Helen Lyle's (Virginia Madsen) research and the grim fates of a string of black men generations before him.

Unfortunately for Anthony, he undergoes a physical transformation that begins in a bee sting and spreads from his hand across his entire body. He is subsequently kidnapped, has his hand cut off, and is gunned down by the police. All in all, not a great day's Candymannin'.

Never mind the fact that, as an artist, Anthony's hands are a fundamental part of his craft, he now has to exist for eternity in a limbo nether-state as part of the Candyman hive, to be summoned at will into school bathrooms and the like.