Cinema’s first major Black movie monster, the towering hooked specter — arguably a metaphor for white America’s fear of the Black man — can only be called up by looking at your own reflection in a piece of glass.
The original film was based on Clive Barker’s short story “The Forbidden,” but the buzzy tale’s origins also parallel real events. In 1987, reporter Steve Bogira published the story of Ruthie Mae McCoy. A resident of Chicago’s near-South Side ALBA Homes, she had called the police to report an intruder. Someone had exploited an architectural flaw in her housing complex and crawled through her bathroom mirror. Days after the call, she was found in her apartment, shot to death.
Source: ‘Candyman’: Vanessa E. Williams on How ‘Candyman’ Reframes the Original – The Hollywood Reporter