Movie Review: "The Craft" (1996)

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Movie: "The Craft"

Director: Andrew Fleming
Year: 1996
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 41 minutes

A group of high school girls who practice witchcraft starts to use their magical powers for revenge and personal gain. Things quickly get out of hand.

See, this is what happens when you give catty teenage girls magical powers! "The Craft" is a film about four of the most powerful teenage witches to come out of the 90's who are not named Sabrina. It stars Robin Tunney as Sarah, the new girl at her Catholic school. She has just moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles with her family. A short time after arriving, she becomes ostracized when star football player Chris Hooker, played by Skeet Ulrich, starts a nasty rumor about her sexual practices and prowess. Now that she's a bit of a pariah, she starts to hang out with three other outcast girls named Nancy, Bonnie, and Rochelle, played by Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell, and Rachel True. This group of girls just so happen to dabble in witchcraft, and Sarah becomes the key fourth element in their group. It turns out, she was just what they needed to make their spells work properly. The girls, being the bitter catty teenagers they are, use their powers to get even with those who have wronged them, and really, most of the people in their crosshairs deserved it. Of course, things start to spiral drastically out of hand when people start dying.

"The Craft" is a typical 90's horror movie that has been targeted to a teenage audience despite its R rating. The film was clearly shot with a PG-13 rating in mind since there really isn't much in the way of gore, language, or sex. Despite that, the film still got slapped with an R rating dues to its occult themes and an attempted rape scene.

This really isn't a "good movie" in the traditional sense. The acting is pretty bad all around. Robin Tunney can barely do anything convincingly, and Fairuza Balk is so over the top when delivering all of her lines that it's laughable. Everyone else in the movie is pretty one-note in terms of their performances and their characters. The story is relatively weak. When it comes down to it, it's little more than a high school drama with some witchy magic thrown in for fun. The narrative is comical at times, and there is a point when the witches turn on each other the catalyst for which is a bit ridiculous. Despite everything wrong with "The Craft," we would be lying if we said we weren't entertained by the absurdity of it all.

Despite its bad acting, writing, and 90's CGI, we still had a really fun time watching "The Craft" in all its campy emo witchy teen drama glory. It's these kinds of movies that are destined to become classics down the line and we're glad we gave it the time.

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My Rating: 6.5/10
BigJ's Rating: 5.5/10
IMDB's Rating: 6.3/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 50%
Do we recommend this movie: Sure, why not?