In the 1992 film Candyman, loosely based on Clive Barker’s story “The Forbidden,” Virginia Madsen played Helen Lyle, a grad student who’s researching an urban legend about a murderous supernatural being who is said to terrorize Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects. According to the myth, he can be summoned by saying his name, “Candyman,” five times while looking in a mirror. Unwisely, she does so, and it turns out that Candyman isn’t merely a legend—he’s a vengeful, dangerous spirit with a hook for a hand and a chest cavity full of bees.

In the original movie, Candyman (played by Tony Todd) pursues Helen, intoning such phrases as “Be my victim,” and “Come with me and be immortal.” He kills multiple people—as well as a dog—and Helen is blamed for his crimes, which also include the kidnapping of a baby. Candyman attempts to kill Helen and the child in a fire; she saves the infant, but not herself. At the end of the film, it’s revealed that she, too, has become a murderous ghost. Two sequels followed in the ’90s, but a new film—also called Candyman, premiering in theaters on Aug. 27—ignores the events of those sequels. Instead, it functions as  new sequel to the original film, deepening its mythology in a number of compelling ways.

It’s a mythology that’s only vaguely sketched out in Barker’s original story, which appeared in the fifth volume of his Books of Blood collections of the 1980s. That story took place in Liverpool, England, and followed grad student Helen Buchanan, who’s doing a thesis on graffiti in council estates. She finds an elaborate mural that includes the phrase “Sweets to the sweet” from Hamlet. In conversations with local residents, she hears the legend of a killer known as Candyman, who’s said to be responsible for a series of gruesome deaths in the area. Helen is unsure that he’s real, but he soon reveals himself to her, saying, “you doubted me…so I was obliged to come.” (There’s nothing about saying his name in the mirror, a detail the filmmakers apparently lifted from the old Bloody Mary urban legend. He just shows up.)

As in the movie, he’s a supernatural creature infested by bees, who’s given to stentorian pronouncements. But there’s a key difference: In Barker’s tale, he had waxy, yellowish skin, blue lips, and red hair; in the movie, he was Black, as were all the residents of the Cabrini-Green projects. Candyman also had a disturbing backstory that wasn’t in the original text; in the late 1800s, he was a painter named Daniel Robitaille who was tortured and killed by a racist mob for having a relationship, and a child, with a White woman. Among other horrors, they cut off one of his hands, jammed a hook into the bloody stump, and set a swarm of bees upon him.

Helen, the 1992 film’s protagonist, was White; so was Bernard Rose, its writer and director. That Candyman vaguely gestured toward the fact that Helen is exploiting tales of violence against Black people for her thesis; it also pointed out that she lives in a refurbished building that used to be a housing project but is now a luxury flat. But for all its stylishness—and memorable performances by Madsen, Todd, and Vanessa Williams as a Cabrini-Green resident—it was telling a story about Black people from a distinctly White perspective. It’s hard not wonder how it would have been told differently by Black filmmakers.

The new sequel, however, is the work of Black artists; it’s helmed by Little Woods director Nia DaCosta and co-written by Oscar winner Jordan Peele of Get Out and Us fame. Its main character is wonderfully played by Watchmen’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. He portrays painter Anthony McCoy, who finds new inspiration in the legend of Candyman. One of his new works—a mirror installation at an art gallery—inspires a White woman to say Candyman’s name five times while making out with her exploitative White gallery-owner boyfriend. A silhouetted Candyman—who’s visible only as a reflection in the mirror—appears and slaughters them both, and it’s only the first of several dazzlingly staged kills.

Anthony lives with his partner, art dealer Brianna Cartwright (WandaVision’s Teyonah Parris), in a gorgeous apartment in a building that sits where Cabrini-Green once stood; the film tackles issues of gentrification with aplomb, as Anthony explores the remnants of the projects on an obsessive quest to find out more about the Candyman myth. Along the way, he’s stung by a bee; as the wound festers, he starts to have strange visions and finds out that there’s far more to the legend of Candyman than just Daniel Robitaille. Some of this backstory is portrayed with paper-cutout puppetry, which is absolutely riveting; callbacks to the first movie include cameos by Williams and another notable actor.

The film proceeds at a slow, deliberate pace for much of its running time, only to rush headlong through its last 20 minutes—but it’s a breathtaking ending that delves into the legacy of White violence against Black people in a shocking and satisfying way. Overall, it’s a worthy sequel that’s far more insightful than the original film—or Barker’s relatively unambitious slasher-ghost trifle. One hopes that DaCosta and Peele will return for another sequel to sweeten the deal.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.