In a Shadow and Act exclusive clip debut, Candyman director Nia DaCosta is sharing more about the film and its intent ahead of Juneteenth.

In the below clip, the director discusses the importance of Juneteenth and also talks about about the perspective that her reimagining of the film is coming from. The director talks about the duality of the Black experience in America, especially in light of last year’s events.

“That’s something about this film as well. There’s something about this bittersweet hope,” she said in part. “In the real world, we create monsters of men all the time. People are murdered [and] they become either saints or they are vilified. Throughout the last year and a half, it was always coming back to that truth. Horror is a really effective tool when it comes to telling stories things that impact us on a social level.”

The film, which DaCosta co-wrote with Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfield, is produced by Peele as well.  Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and Colman Domingo star.

Watch the clip below:

The film’s official description: 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 (Abdul-Mateen II) and his partner, gallery director Brianna Cartwright (Parris), 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 (Domingo) exposes Anthony to the tragically horrific nature of the true story behind Candyman. Anxious to maintain his status in the Chicago art world, Anthony begins to explore these macabre details in his studio as fresh grist 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.

Candyman will be released in theaters on August 27.