Helen Lyle, a Chicago graduate student who is researching urban legends, hears of a local story about the Candyman. The legend claims that Candyman can be summoned by saying his name five times while facing a mirror, whereupon he will kill the summoner with a hook jammed on the bloody stump of his right arm. She encounters two cleaning ladies who tell her about Ruthie Jean, a resident in the notorious Cabrini-Green Public housing in the United States who they claim was killed by Candyman. Helen's research turns up 25 other murders in the area similar to Ruthie Jean's. Later that evening, Helen and her friend Bernadette Walsh, skeptical of Candyman's existence, call Candyman's name into the mirror in Helen's bathroom; nothing happens.
Coleman Tarrant, the father of New Orleans schoolteacher Annie Tarrant, is murdered while investigating the deaths of three men in a manner similar to the Candyman urban legend. One year later — and three years after the Candyman (film) in Chicago — Professor Philip Purcell writes a book about the latter case. Candyman kills Purcell in a public bathroom following a book signing. Annie's brother, Ethan, is accused of Purcell's murder because of previous confrontations between the two over the subject. After one of Annie's students claims to have seen the Candyman, she tries to discredit the legend by invoking his name. Annie summons Candyman to New Orleans on the eve of Mardi Gras, where the killings begin in earnest. Her husband, Paul Mckeever, becomes one of Candyman's victims, while one of her students, Matthew, disappears.
Several years after the events of the Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh, the ghostly serial killer returns once again from beyond the grave, this time, during the eve of Day of the Dead, to haunt a Los Angeles art gallery owner named Caroline McKeever, a distant relative of the Candyman (and also Annie Tarrant's daughter) in order for him to claim her soul so she will be next to him. In the meantime, the Candyman goes about killing all those associated with Caroline (starting with artist Miguel Velasco, his lover Lena, and following with her roommate Tamara) in his usual gory ways with his hook. He also kidnaps her friend David de la Paz and makes it appear to the authorities that Caroline is the one responsible for the killings. Seasoned police detective (who is secretly prejudiced against most minorities) L.V. Sacco is murdered by Candyman while Caroline is in the car, which not only brings the whole local police department down on her head, but puts her in the firing line of Sacco's equally bigoted partner Lt. Det. Samuel Deacon Kraft, who has no intention of bringing her in alive.
A decade after the Cabrini Green's last tower was demolished in a residential neighborhood in Chicago, visual artist Anthony McCoy and his girlfriend Brianna Cartwrig move into a luxury apartment in the now-unrecognizable neighborhood, teeming with millennials and people who generally , they are unaware of their dark past.