Psycho's Movie Reviews #327: The Craft (1996)

The Craft is a 1996 American teen supernatural horror film directed by Andrew Fleming from a screenplay by Peter Filardi and Fleming and a story by Filardi. The film stars Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell, and Rachel True. It follows four outcast teenage girls at a Los Angeles parochial high school who pursue witchcraft for their own gain and subsequently experience negative repercussions.

The Craft was theatrically released in the United States on May 3, 1996, by Columbia Pictures. It was a surprise hit, earning $6.7 million in its opening weekend and $55.6 million worldwide, against a budget of $15 million. The film received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the performances of its leads, direction and production values, but criticized its writing, inconsistent tone and political messages.

In the years since its release, the film has gained a cult following. The film was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Horror Film and Fairuza Balk for Best Supporting Actress. Balk and Tunney also won the MTV Movie Award for Best Fight. A sequel, The Craft: Legacy, was released on October 28, 2020.

Plot

Sarah Bailey, a beautiful but troubled teenage girl with unusual abilities, has just moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles with her father and stepmother. At her new school, she forms a friendship with a group of girls who are considered outcasts for one reason or another and rumoured to be witches. Bonnie Harper bears burn scars from an auto accident, Nancy Downs lives in a trailer with her mother and abusive stepfather, and Rochelle Zimmerman is African American and subjected to racist bullying by a group of popular white girls. The girls all worship a powerful deity they call "Manon".

Sarah becomes attracted to the popular Chris Hooker but when Bonnie observes her levitating a pencil in class, she and the other outcast girls become convinced that she is the right person to complete their coven as "the fourth", completing an air-water-earth-fire circle and making them all powerful. One afternoon, Sarah is harassed by a vagrant with a snake (whom she had encountered before in her new house) and he is immediately hit by a car. The girls believe that together they willed it to happen and the event strengthens the bond among them. It is also revealed that Sarah has attempted suicide in the past.

After a date with Chris, Sarah is upset to find that he has spread a false rumour that they had sex and she was terrible in bed. When Sarah confronts him, he treats her disrespectfully in front of his friends. In response, Sarah casts a love spell on him. Rochelle then casts a revenge spell on racist bully Laura Lizzie, Bonnie casts a spell for beauty, and Nancy a spell for power. It very soon becomes clear that the spells have been successful: Chris becomes infatuated with Sarah, scars that Bonnie has on her back miraculously heal, and Rochelle's bully, Laura, begins to lose her hair. Nancy causes her stepfather to have a heart attack and die, enabling her and her mother to cash in on his life insurance policy and move out of the trailer park they had been living in and into a luxurious high-rise apartment.

Nancy quickly becomes power hungry and encourages the others to join her in a rite called "Invocation of the Spirit," despite being warned against the spell by Lirio, the owner of a local occult shop and practicing witch. Upon completion of the complicated spell, Nancy is struck by lightning. The following morning, the other girls see Nancy walking on water, with beached sharks and other dead animals littering the shore. In the days that follow, Nancy becomes increasingly devoid of empathy and engages in risky behaviour that endangers her life and those of others.

The spells the girls cast eventually lead to negative consequences, as Bonnie becomes aggressively narcissistic, Rochelle finds Laura traumatized by her baldness and sobbing hysterically, and the obsessed Chris attempts to rape Sarah after she rejects his continual advances. In supposed retaliation, Nancy uses a glamour spell to make herself look like Sarah and attempts to fool Chris into having sex with her at a party. She is interrupted by the real Sarah, who tells Nancy to leave with her, but it becomes obvious that Nancy's desire to control Chris is mixed with unrequited feelings. Upset at being fooled, Chris says Nancy must be jealous, angering her, and she uses her power to kill Chris by throwing him out of a window.

Sarah attempts a binding spell to prevent Nancy from doing more harm, but it does not work and the coven turns on Sarah. They invade her dreams, torment her with visions of swarms of snakes, rats, and insects, and make her believe that her family has died in a plane crash. Sarah seeks out Lirio, but changes her mind and leaves before Lirio can offer help. The rest of the coven then try to induce Sarah to commit suicide, and Nancy cuts Sarah's wrists herself. Although initially terrified, Sarah successfully invokes the spirit and is able to heal herself and fight back. She scares off Bonnie and Rochelle by showing them glamour in a mirror of Bonnie with her face scarred and Rochelle losing her hair like Laura. Sarah then defeats Nancy and binds her, preventing her from causing harm forever.

Bonnie and Rochelle, finding their powers gone, visit Sarah to attempt reconciliation, only to find that she wants nothing to do with them and that Manon took their powers because they abused them. They scornfully mutter that Sarah must have lost her powers too but Sarah then makes a tree branch nearly fall on them. She warns them to be careful not to end up like Nancy.

In the final scene, Nancy has been committed to a psychiatric hospital, delusional and stripped of her powers, and strapped to her bed as she desperately insists she can fly.

Production

The concept for The Craft came from a collaboration between producer Douglas Wick, who wanted to create a film about the high school experience blended with witchcraft, and screenwriter Peter Filardi, who extensively researched the topic and wrote the initial draft. Andrew Fleming was hired to direct and produce the final version of the screenplay.

Eighty-five other actresses screen-tested for the four main roles, including Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johansson and Alicia Silverstone. Rachel True and Fairuza Balk were the first to be cast in their respective roles. The character of Rochelle was re-written to be black when True was cast, incorporating racism subplot as the character's major conflict. Robin Tunney was initially cast in the role of Bonnie, but the producers decided she would be better in the starring role of Sarah, which she was persuaded to accept despite preferring the former. Neve Campbell, the most well known of the four actresses for her role on Party of Five, was then cast as Bonnie. Tunney had shaved her head for her role in Empire Records and had to wear a wig throughout filming.

Production enlisted a real-life Wiccan named Pat Devin to act as an on-set advisor for the film. She wrote the incantations used and ensured that the treatment of the Wiccan subject-matter was as accurate and respectful as possible.

The shooting took place throughout Los Angeles, including the Los Angeles International Airport, Sunset Boulevard, and Broadway. Verdugo Hills High School was the setting for the fictional Catholic school, St. Benedict's Academy; production designer Marek Dobrowolski added different religious statues throughout the building and the grounds. Sarah's home in the film was a two-story Spanish mansion and the interiors were built on a soundstage at Culver City Studios. The occult bookstore was shot at the El Adobe Marketplace in Hollywood Boulevard. The room was repainted and enhanced and occult icons such as candles, stigmas, religious statues, masks, and tribal dolls were added for effect. Jensen's Recreation Centre in Echo Park was chosen to avoid overuse of frequently seen Los Angeles locations. During filming, an unrelated accident occurred in which a child was injured; the production's medic saw this and called paramedics. The makeshift altar was set in Wood Ranch, a location that Dobrowolski called the hardest to find. Dobrowolski wanted to avoid manicured parks like Griffith Park. The beach summoning took place at Leo Carrillo State Park, which was chosen because its crest made it seem less visually boring.

The makeup effects were designed and created by Tony Gardner and his special effects company Alterian, Inc., which also created the beached sharks for the film.

Soundtrack

The Craft: Music from the Motion Picture was released on April 30, 1996, by Columbia Records on CD and cassette, one month before the film's official theatrical release in the United States. The soundtrack contains a collection of songs, to suit the theme of the movie, from various artists including Heather Nova, Letters to Cleo, and Spacehog. Nova's version of "I Have the Touch", originally performed by Peter Gabriel, which featured during the end credits of the film, was exclusively included on the soundtrack, and is not available as a single, or on any of Nova's albums, nor does she perform the song in concert. The tracks in film, titled "Sick Child", "Fallin'" and "Scorn", performed by Siouxsie and the Banshees, Connie Francis and Portishead, respectively, were omitted from the soundtrack due to copyright issues from their record labels. However, they were only included in the film as part of an arrangement with PolyGram Film & Television Licensing. An uncredited bonus track, "Bells, Books, and Candles", composed by Graeme Revell for the film's score, was included on the soundtrack. A follow-up soundtrack, The Original Motion Picture Score, was released on June 18, 1996 from Varèse Sarabande, and contained the film's score which was entirely composed and produced by Graeme Revell.

Release/Reception/Box Office

The Craft was theatrically released in the United States on May 3, 1996, by Columbia Pictures.

On Rotten Tomatoes the film a 57% approval rating based on 60 reviews, with an average rating of 5.5/10. The site's consensus reads: "The Craft's campy magic often overrides the feminist message at the film's core, but its appealing cast and postmodern perspective still cast a sporadic spell".

Emanuel Levy of Variety described it as "a neatly crafted film that begins most promisingly as a black comedy a la Heathers, but gradually succumbs to its tricky machinery of special effects". Roger Ebert also felt the film was mired in excessive special effects, but praised the performances of the four leads, as did Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle. Stephen Holden of The New York Times echoed other reviews, praising the first half of the film as a "celebration of adolescent nonconformity and female independence", but criticized the last half as a "heavy-handed sermon about karma" with "garish" special effects. Rita Kempley of The Washington Post called it "a brew of Hawthorne, Heathers and Hollywood hocus-pocus" that was nonetheless a "bubbling mess of a movie" that "leaves us more bothered than bewitched".

The film was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Horror Film and Fairuza Balk for Best Supporting Actress. Balk and Tunney also won the MTV Movie Award for Best Fight.

The film opened at number one at the North American box office, making US$6,710,995. The movie was a sleeper hit, which Columbia attributed to teenagers and young women, who responded to its themes. According to Box Office Mojo, The Craft is the 11th-highest-grossing film since 1980 dealing with the genre of witches.

My Review

You know, I love the movies Ideal Home and Bad Dreams. I'd never guess that they were both written and directed by the same person, Andrew Fleming. You may not know the man, but chances are you know his 1996 film, The Craft.

Producer Douglas Wick (he produced Stuart Little and also co-wrote the sequels) wanted to create a movie that mixed the high school experience with witchcraft, which he worked on with screenwriter Peter Filardi (Flatliners). Well, he sure did it. This is a movie that was a quiet hit but has never gone away. Take it from someone who has dated plenty of goth girls.

Sarah Bailey (Robin Tunney, wearing a wig as she had shaved her head for Empire Records) is the new girl in town, having moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco with her father (Cliff DeYoung, Shock Treatment) and stepmother. She soon becomes friends with a group of outcasts who are rumoured to be witches: the scarred Bonnie (Neve Campbell), trailer trash and totally awesome Nancy (the legit Wiccan Fairuza Balk, who was also in Return to Oz) and Rochelle (Rachel True, CB4), whose black skin in a nearly all white school makes her a target of ridicule. The witch rumour? Yeah, it's true. They all worship an entity they refer to as Manon.

Sarah becomes attracted to the popular Chris Hooker (Skeet Ulrich, who was very much a thing in 1996), but he claims that they slept together and ruins her reputation before it gets started. That leads to the girls finally completing a big spell that gives them everything they want: Chris falls in love so hard that he can't live without Sarah, racist bully Laura Lizzie (Christine Taylor) loses her hair and popularity, Bonnie becomes gorgeous and Nancy's abusive stepfather dies and she gets rich.

However, it's not enough. After a rite called the "Invocation of the Spirit," Nancy gains even more power because, you know, she got hit by lightning (actual Wiccan Pat Devin was the on-set advisor, so maybe this really does occur). Now she can't be stopped and all of the girls other than Sarah have gone wrong. The coven turns on her, but Sarah ends up stronger than all of them.

Of course, Blumhouse is remaking this, with Zoe Lister-Jones directing. There was talk of another remake and a direct to video sequel which never happened. I had hoped that that luck would have stopped this new version, but it's already finished production.

I learned a really important lesson from The Craft. The girl I was dating at the time asked me which member of the coven I found most attractive. I said none of them. She kept pressing and begging for my answer. Of course Fairuza Balk is the right answer, but I kept quiet until finally, after an entire meal of her asking, I told her. She instantly grew angry and said, "The right answer is none of them!" Somewhere inside this story is a lesson.

I love the scene where all the fish wash up and the coven realizes how much power they have. You don't know how many times the women in my life have made me watch this movie. I have grown smarter and not said a single thing about Nancy.

I can see how some may feel this has not aged well. But the talent at hand here is really all the money as one saying goes. And it all starts so... well I almost would have said innocently, but maybe that is not the right word. It begins slowly, it begins with things that seem nice to say the least. But even without anyone telling us, we know things can't be that easy - can they? Most certainly not.

The movie goes on predictable, the effects may also not have aged well, but they are decent enough if you give this a break. The friendship of the females we have here feels more than real. The dialog is quite well written and the performances match that. The right women (playing girls, but nonetheless) for the right roles at the right time. Buffy was always quoted as an inspiration for Charmed, but I reckon this movie also had something to do with it. Lesson learned: Don't mess with a witch... unless you are one yourself of course. 8.6/10