The Candyman Experience Arrives in Chicago This Weekend

Were you the sort of kid who enjoyed turning off the lights and joining your friends in staring into the bathroom mirror while repeating the name, "Bloody Mary," until your mind began to play horrifying tricks on you? This weekend in the Windy City, you can relive the jitters of your youth at the new interactive pop-up experience, The CANDYMAN “Say it. I Dare You!” challenge, though in this case, the horrors may not be all in your head. The event aims to promote Universal Pictures and Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures' film from Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, which arrives in theaters on Friday, August 27th.

The "Candyman" experience invites participants to enter a dark room located at Chicago's Pioneer Court, 401 Michigan Ave., where they will be challenged to stand in front of a mirror and repeat the dreaded name of "Candyman," a supernatural killer with a hook for a hand, five times in order to summon his presence. The spooky hijinks will occur from 12pm to 8pm on Saturday, August 21st to Sunday, August 22nd.

Oscar-winner Jordan Peele produced and co-wrote this fresh take on Bernard Rose's 1992 thriller of the same name. The director this time is the hugely promising Nia DaCosta, who recently made her feature debut with "Little Woods" and will also be helming Marvel's upcoming blockbuster appropriately dubbed, "The Marvels."

Here is the film's official synopsis: "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 of "Watchmen" and "Us") and his partner, gallery director Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris of "Wandavision" and "If Beale Street Could Talk"), 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 of "Zola" and "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."