An academic’s (Virginia Madsen) research into urban legends takes her through the looking glass when one grizzly ghost story gets its hooks into her.

This psychological thriller might be best known for its mirror-based meme (summon the Candyman by saying his name five times), but that high-concept hook barely scratches the surface of this 1992 masterpiece. It uses the slasher-style dare to lure you in with the promise of cheap thrills and blaxploitation spills, only to trick you into watching something intelligent and thought-provoking that hits you so hard in the gut you don’t even mind.

Bernard Rose relocates Clive Barker’s short story from Liverpool to Chicago, and uses a housing projects setting to explore racial, gender and class inequality. He holds a cracked and bloodied mirror to society, reflecting the demonisation of African Americans and the violence allowed to tear through entire communities.

Telling the story from a white woman’s perspective may have been of its time (the remake changed this but forgot to do anything with it), but as a sensible white woman Helen is sure to bring extra layers. At first her interest in the black community borders on exploitative, using their tragedies to “bury” her academic rivals. Her privilege even makes her oblivious to how uncomfortable her colleague (Kasi Lemmons) is at the crime scene. But Helen has a hell of an arc, and when the bodies start piling up around her, she realises the Candyman is not a game. But Candy Land is a game so it was an easy mistake to make.

Her realistic character (and Madsen’s brilliant performance) is one of the ingredients that makes Candyman so believable. It also has a strikingly grounded sense of place and vivid production design, the graffiti-smothered council buildings so rundown you can practically smell them. This modern gothic setting (enhanced by Philip Glass’ eerie score) helps us accept the supernatural elements but also question them and seek rational explanations, despite where that led poor Helen.

Candyman (Tony Todd) is a folk devil version of the real people this community fears, men who commit violence against women and children. And Helen’s husband (Xander Berkeley) has blood on his hands too, having her committed to a psychiatric hospital for a month while he shacks up with a younger student. We know he is cheating and gaslighting her, could he be framing her too?

Whichever way you slice it, Candyman exemplifies the pick-n-mix of hard-boiled brutality and social commentary that horror does best. Come for the slumber party games, stay for the visceral dissection of centuries worth of economic subjugation.