The original had a weirdly high number of somehow resonate takes on the Bloody Mary thing. Kind of always reminded me of Hellraiser, which also pointed to a somehow interesting alternate reality (in that case having to do with the nature of moral existence as opposed to humans and their relationship to myth). I had forgotten, if I ever knew, that Barker was the connecting tissue.

Humans and myth and mytho-history, or nowadays even the notion of virally transmitted narrative and how guilt becomes narrative seems a loss to focus solely on race for this story.

Rather, seems like Candyman is more akin, or was, to Rings, or Buried Giant.