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24th Aug 2021

The cast of the new Candyman reveal their favourite scary movies

Rory Cashin

The cast also chatted about the stories they were told as young kids…

We’ll admit it… we watched the original Candyman movie at too young an age.

Even if it weren’t an absolutely terrifying movie in its own right (which it is), the basic premise of the movie was still scary enough to set up residence in our young minds rent free.

You say his name five times into a mirror, and he will appear and kill you. That is such a scary idea, that it managed to effectively invade the young minds of an entire generation, all too spooked to actually try it out in real life.

We recently caught up with the cast of the new Candyman sequel, which was co-written by Oscar-winner Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us), and told them that we had watched the original when we were way too young, and asked where there any movies that had a similar influence on them.

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Teyonah Parris both answered simultaneously: “Candyman.”

Meanwhile, their co-star Colman Domingo went down a different path with his answer:

“My favourite scary movie is Carrie. Carrie is terrifying, because it is such a simple thing of a young woman who is coming of age, and then there are demons and things like that. I don’t know, there are just things that we are afraid of.

“There are so many images… it got me terrified to go to the prom when I got older, because I thought there was going to be pig’s blood being poured down on a teenager and then she is going to set the place on fire! Carrie is terrifying!”

You can check out our full interview with Colman Domingo right here:

We also asked about spooky stories that might have been passed on when they were younger, stuff like the Candyman tale that might have been used to scare some manners into us by our parents or older siblings or what have you.

Domingo told us that his family mostly kept it pretty light:

“I think my family was a pretty funny family, so I think we passed down funny, crazy, weird stories. Nothing truly traumatic, I don’t think we like to pass that on. I think maybe being black people in America, we didn’t want to pass on the trauma stories, or at least we didn’t!”

Meanwhile, Abdul-Mateen II said that while the truly spooky stuff wasn’t passed on to him, his family was very much into a more spiritual side:

“My family definitely believes in spirits. Ancestral spirits and superstitions and things like that. So we definitely have that history. And dreams and the importance of what happens in dreams. So my family, even to this day, are still very much in touch with that side of town, for sure.”

Candyman is released in Irish cinemas on Friday, 27 August.

Clip via Universal Ireland

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