Iconic, influential Urban Legend horror from a Clive Barker story opens with a striking credit sequence that promises more visual pizzaz than the film manages to deliver. The idea’s a good one: mythical creature with a deadly hook for a hand haunts the notorious (now long gone) Cabrini Green housing projects in Chicago. This scary being serving as thesis for a couple of rising asst. professors: one Black and wisely wary; one White and emboldened by Caucasian cultural class entitlement. The white prof actually living in an apartment built flush against a Cabrini Green wall. Naturally, once past a fierce gang of teens, they reach even more intimidating areas inside where the fable (say his name five times and he'll appear) proves all too real. Easy to see how the concept ought to work. (Applause on the sharp dichotomy between threateningly graffitied halls and welcoming apartment interiors.) Alas, we don’t much feel it as director Bernard Rose, working off his own script, does far better with the White Entitlement aspects (both concrete and allegorical) than he does with the technical aspects needed to bring off the horror tropes.* Well, other than the bees. Bees always make their creepy mark.
DOUBLE-BILL: Not seen here, but there are various sequels and a 2021 remake shepherded, but not directed, by Jordan Peele.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Little surprise, Rose's later career skewed toward Tolstoy and bio-pics on First Viennese School classical composers.
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