“Candyman” is essentially a rip-off of the “A Nightmare On Elm Street” movies and it has got to be on the dullest horror movies I’ve seen. It’s a gruesome picture without any hint of an interesting story.

In “Candyman”, Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen “Sideways”, “The Number 23”) and Bernadette Walsh (Kasi Lemmons “The Silence of the Lambs”) are researchers out to debunk urban myths such as the murders attributed to ‘Candyman’ (Tony Todd “The Rock”, “Platoon”). Unfortunately for them, the two researchers are about to find out that Candyman is very real. As the movie continues, the violent imagery gets more and more graphic while the plot becomes thinner and thinner.

The two researchers are painfully bland. You spend the most time with the Helen character and she isn’t remotely interesting. The character of Bernadette is slightly more tolerable than the character of Helen. Candyman has a booming voice but nothing interesting to say. He practically begs for one of the characters in the movie to believe in him because much like Freddy Krueger, he relies on people’s fears of him in order to exist. The Candyman sometimes has a large number of bees with him and in one scene they are in his mouth. Apparently, the actor really had bees put in his mouth (he did have a mouth guard) and what a terrible price to pay for such a poor movie. Ted Raimi (“Spider-Man”) has an early cameo that adds practically nothing to the movie.

Movies such as “Candyman” are not scary, they are merely desperate attempts to scare. Many horror filmmakers seem to be under the impression that flesh and blood being in front of the camera is a suitable substitute for atmosphere, story and characters. Candyman comes after Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Pinhead and so many others yet it brings very little new to the table.