'The Craft: Legacy' Review
PG13: Thematic elements, crude and sexual content, language and brief drug materia
Runtime: 1 Hr and 32 Minutes
Production Companies: Columbia Pictures, Blumhouse Productions, Red Wagon Entertainment
Distributor: Sony Pictures Entertainment
Director: Zoe Lister-Jones
Writers: Zoe Lister-Jones
Cast: Cailee Spaeny, Gideon Adlon, Lovie Simone, Zoey Luna, Michelle Monaghan, David Duchovny
Release Date: October 28, 2020 (Video on Demand)
An eclectic foursome of aspiring teenage witches get more than they bargained for as they lean into their newfound powers.
1996’s The Craft is a widely beloved supernatural horror flick that gained a cult following long after its release. It gave the witch community a cool, slick, gothic identity. Having gothic teenage witches in a Catholic school? It just has the 90s edge and rebellious nature. It is the peak of 90s campy horror that is such a fun romp for fans of the genre to revisit, especially during this time of the year. Now after 24 years, we have a sequel. The Craft: Legacy from actress-turned-writer/director Zoe Lister-Jones because, why not?!
What The Craft did for the gothic girls in the 90s, The Craft: Legacy does for the current Gen-z TikTok age. Lister-Jones must’ve taken a major deep dive, doing intense investigative research into the Gen-Z culture, spending hours on tiktok, tumblr, and witch twitter to conjure up this sequel because the style, joke, tone, and atmosphere is clearly designed for the modern youth. Much like the mindset of Gen-z people today, it has a pretty woke sensitivity. As far as striking a new tone goes, Lister-Jones does a good job capturing the essence of the Gen-z era through her screenplay. This is a PG-13 movie that clearly knows how to appeal to its target audience.
What helps set this film apart from its predecessor is the consistent camaraderie between the four main girls in their coven: an area Lister-Jones accomplished well. It promotes a strong message on female friendship and even intersectionality. The narrative solely focuses on Lily (Cailee Spaeny) befriending a group of manic pixie dream witches Frankie (Gideon Adlon), Tabby (Lovie Simone), and Lourdes (Zoey Luna). Whereas the original’s finale pitted the members of the coven against each other, Lister-Jones rebuffed that drastic drama and swapped it with a warm-hearted, ‘friendship is magic’ direction. Now, their main adversary is having to navigate living in a male dominated world.
The film benefits from its own unique light and silly tone that never takes itself too seriously, allowing it to maintain a fun, upbeat energy. Lister-Jones even does her own spin on some recognizable character types from the previous film and reshapes them to fit our current age, to great effect. This specifically comes in the form of the character Timmy, a misogynistic bully who picks on Lily on her first day. However, once the coven casts a spell on him, he’s transformed from a toxic masculinity bearing, body-shaming male to a progressively woke, effeminate dude. They even end up accepting him into their clique! It’s such a refreshing character change, considering in the original you had Skeet Ulrich as Chris, who went from toxic asshole to obsessed creep. The friendship struck between Lily and her coven is heartwarming to witness, and to see them wreak havoc in a John Hughes-esque fashion only adds to the fun.
While Zoe Lister-Jones makes an adequate effort setting the atmosphere to match with the Gen-Z teenage demographic, it heavily lacks a voice or any original bone in its skeleton to stand on its own as a sequel. The leads may be Gen-Z kids who act their age, but there’s no personality or individual character traits to any of the coven members whatsoever. Lily is the audience’s avatar, Frankie is the hyper comic relief who speaks in modern slang which will definitely soon be outdated, Lourdes is the tallest one, and Tabby is the Black one. The actresses are good in their respective roles and have a fun chemistry but the material and the characters they portray are so one-dimensional. The only character who actually shows dimension and a personality is Timmy, the bully-turned-woke dude. He’s the only interesting character in the movie with a rather strong emotional anchor point. This movie tries so hard to appeal to the Gen-Z audience, but it feels like it was written by a tumblr bot because of the lack of personality and identity it bears in the characters. The film desperately needed one more writer’s pass to flesh out the girls enough for them to stand out.
The Craft: Legacy is the Hot Topic Force Awakens to a Gothic Renaissance's A New Hope. No need to further on that description because that’s exactly what it is. It’s a light, new retread of the predecessor but with a modernized coat of paint that you still can’t fully enjoy. Albeit being entertaining, it fails to capture the trashy spirit and significant camp style that made The Craft as beloved as it was. Contemporizing the rebellious nature and flair of gothic teenage witches in a Catholic school with poppy, Forever 21 witches in a standard public high school is an obvious example of how bland this update is. This will undoubtedly piss off fans of the original who came to see some of the same, gothic/punk aesthetic that was the key component to the original’s identity. While updating that does match a current look, it prevents the film from having anything of a timely factor to it. It doesn’t make it better that it’s a sequel, because once the film stops ripping off a ton of the same exact beats of the original The Craft, a loud echo whispers in your ear in the latter half, “Hey, we’re a sequel. We're gonna make this connect to The Craft, Star Wars: Force Awakens style!” The moment I aired out, “It would be fun if it was just a remake or wasn’t called The Craft,” it felt as if the movie said, “Oh shit we have to be a sequel, let’s do it, let’s do some sequel shit.”
Towards the third act, the plot takes such a drastic, dramatic shift in an attempt to connect itself with the 1996 film while also planting seeds for a sequel that I highly doubt will ever happen. It’s so overstuffed and forced that even the twist itself when revealed hardly makes any sense. If this was a remake/reimagining, it would’ve completely worked, but the fact that instead it decides to be a sequel instead? I have to heavily criticize. The Craft: Legacy had potential and a few fresh ideas of its own to stand out for an entirely new crowd, but its first half follows the annoying Hollywood sequel trend where it hits too many similar beats to its predecessor, even reiterating the same exact iconic dialogue and sequences just for fan service’s sake. By the time it finally takes several sharp turns to finally be a fresh new story, you’re already thinking of the predecessor you could’ve been watching instead. Plus...there’s no real sense of horror here at all. Supernatural, yes, but there’s no scary, spooky, horror, or eerie vibes to it at all. It’s played so safe, which feels so wrong given how well suited the predecessor was for a spooky season. It really begs the question: why give a new generation a modern take on a horror classic when you erase the horror and follow the same formula as the original?
