10 Things You Didn't Know About Candyman

6. He Really Is From Cabrini-Green

In the US, the Cabrini-Green Homes on the north side of Chicago are axiomatic for public housing at its worst. Construction was shoddy, upkeep nonexistent, and almost no effort was made to stem crime and violence in the area, which rapidly became endemic. Residents were mostly Black, often forced there for sheer lack of options due to Chicago’s infamous redlining of residential districts based on race.

Kaci Simmons, who portrayed Bernie Walsh, noted that Candyman was built to be a ghost of that time and place. The film was shot at Cabrini-Green, where several residents took understandable exception to their homes being treated as a backdrop for horror. That tension informed the whole film, but it pervaded Todd’s masterful performance. His jaw-dropping entrance through an apartment medicine cabinet, for instance, wasn’t just imaginative blocking. A *real person* had done the same some years previous, robbing several apartments by breaking through that comparatively flimsy portion of wall.