Since I Value My Life I Will NOT Be Saying Candyman Five Times to Unlock the Final Trailer, Thanks

With Nia DaCosta’s Candyman set to hit theaters this Friday, August 27, there’s one more trailer out there to get us ready to avoid mirrors and bees. However, in order to see the trailer, you have to do a tiny little dare.

According to Bloody Disgusting, a new official website launched this week to coincide with the release of the movie. The new trailer is there, but in order to unlock it, you have to say “Candyman” five times into your microphone.

Um.

Pardon?

via GIPHY

As a Black girl who grew up in Chicago (and someone with a strong sense of self-preservation) I’m gonna have to pass on that one.

I’m kind of amazed, though, with how much Candyman has stuck with me. It’s not like I go around thinking about what spirit lingers in the mirror when I’m brushing my teeth or anything, but as soon as I found out about this website my initial response was a swift and immediate:

via GIPHY

I was a kid when the original came out and, looking back, I feel like I’d heard about the “say his name five times and he’ll show up” part before I realized it was a movie. I feel like a lot of us can relate to that. I remember playing with friends and whispering about Candyman as if he actually existed, daring each other to go home and say his name in the mirror, then getting together the next day to nervously laugh about how we’d get to the third or fourth time before calling it quits.

I can’t believe how much that’s stayed with me after all these years. Like. Just the thought of saying his name five times AT ALL has me out here like:

No I don’t think I will pic.twitter.com/P3dD278DKy

— 42 Duggtrio (@xTrillValentine) August 23, 2021

Some were, apparently, brave enough to do it (keeping them in my thoughts right now):

I see Final Destination all over this photo 👀

— Lt. Nyota Uhura ☆ (@idamaepeep) August 23, 2021

But the overall consensus was:

yeah that’s gonna be a hearty fuck no for me https://t.co/VonAlZgLub

— Imani Gandy (@AngryBlackLady) August 24, 2021

Full disclosure? I got as far as clicking on the link to the new website then promptly closed it. All that greets you is a pitch-black screen that’s waiting for you to say “Candyman” and that was enough to get me to NOPE right out of there.

As someone who appreciates the ins and outs of movie-making, though, I gotta say that the marketing for this film has been absolutely brilliant. Not only do we have this double-dog dare you website, but there are mirror decals to make us second guess going to the bathroom:

Whoever came up with this idea needs a big pay rise #Candyman pic.twitter.com/SBSwSSEXUG

— Tom (@TheWellDrinker) August 19, 2021

In case you need a refresher for what this incarnation of Candyman is about:

For as long as residents can remember, the housing projects of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green neighborhood were terrorized by a word-of-mouth ghost story about a supernatural killer with a hook for a hand, easily summoned by those daring to repeat his name five times into a mirror. In present day, a decade after the last of the Cabrini towers were torn down, visual artist Anthony McCoy (Emmy winner Yahya Abdul-Mateen II; Watchmen, Us) and his partner, gallery director Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris; If Beale Street Could Talk, WandaVision), move into a luxury loft condo in Cabrini, now gentrified beyond recognition and inhabited by upwardly mobile millennials.

With Anthony’s painting career on the brink of stalling, a chance encounter with a Cabrini-Green old-timer (COLMAN DOMINGO; Zola, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) exposes Anthony to the horrific true story behind Candyman. Anxious to maintain his status in the Chicago art world, and spurred on by his white art dealer, Anthony begins to explore these macabre details in his studio as fresh inspiration for paintings, unknowingly opening a door to a complex past that unravels his own sanity and unleashes a terrifying wave of violence that puts him on a collision course with destiny.

Yeah.

I’m not inviting any of that into my house, thanks.

(Image: © 2020 Universal Pictures and MGM Pictures)

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