THE CRAFT: LEGACY
US, 2020, 97 minutes, Colour.
Cailee Spaeny, Zoe Luna, Gideon Adlon, Lovie Simon, David Duchovny, Michelle Monaghan, Nicholas Galitzine, Fairuza Balk.
Directed by Zoe Lister-Jones.
The Craft was a popular film for younger audiences in the mid-1990s, focusing on witchcraft in the suburbs.
This is a variation on the plot for a 21st century audience, especially a teenage girls’ audience. Three girls at school read the book, The Craft, and try to re-create the spells but realise that they really need four girls to have some kind of completion, East, West, North, South and the spirits of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. While this relates to more serious and adult themes, especially in horror films, the spells and magic in this story are comparatively low key and very suburban.
The main focus of the story is on a teenage girl and her mother, moving to a new city and home, the mother in a relationship with a father with three sons. With David Duchovny as the father and Michelle Monaghan as the mother, there is an emphasis on some headliners. The daughter, Lily, is played by Cailee Spaeny (who appeared as the murdered girl in Mare of Easttown).
When the new girl is bullied in class, especially when she has her period and is humiliated, the other girls introduce themselves and, of course, a foursome is set up very quickly. And, there are some magic effects – especially a power of changing people’s personalities from antagonistic to friendly. This happens with one of the bullies in class, Timmy (Nicholas Galitzine) who becomes most apologetic and supportive of the girls – and, in a kind of Ouija seance, reveals that he is gay. And that he has an affection for one of David Duchovny’s sons.
David Duchovny, looking puffed up and artificial, goes round the countryside offering affirmation seminars and comes on very strongly to Lily, later apologising. But, he will become the target of the girls and their spells.
In the meantime, Lily discovers that she has been adopted, confronts her mother, gets an explanation that links her back to the original Craft film, and a last-minute revelation that the character played by Fairuza Balk, now in a padded cell, is her mother.
So, a thriller with touches of horror and magic, generally benign witchcraft, is geared for the very young girls’ audience – but will probably seem tame, even lame, to those who prefer their witchcraft more serious and more grisly.
