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Great Film overall

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I have a handfull of favorite movies from the 90s and this is one of them from my youth. The movie had everything from comedy to drama and horror. I'm a big fan of Neve Campbell (Party of five, Scream, ETC) and Robin Tunney (Empire Records). The characters worked well together. I was entertained throughout. The soundtrack for the film had the perfect songs. If you haven't watched yet, you must.

Director Andrew Fleming was not a familiar name in the middle nineties in my case. But later on I watched his first feature horror film starring a young Jennifer Rubin, BAD DREAMS (1988). Fleming never became one of my interests but let' say that THE CRAFT, released in 1996 is one of these things that caught my attention as a young teenager. And this is another one of those "like it or Leave it" kind of film, among tons of other cheesy teen films released during that era. I loved it and still like it to this day. Even more, it is probably one of my favorite gems of this genre and decade. Thanks to the actresses.Sarah (Robin Tunney) is a young girl that doesn't seem to fit in. That until she moves with her father from San Fransisco to Los Angeles, where she learns in private school, that she isn't the only one in her situation. She soon starts hanging out with three other rejects. Believed to be gifted with the ability to perform magic, the girls are looking for a fourth member to complete their circle. But what Sarah soon learns is that not everything is grey in the heart of a true witch.With THE CRAFT, Fleming and Peter Filardi managed to come up with a pretty fun pop-corn film and dug up a beautiful and fascinating cast of actresses. Most of all, the fourth were able to make us believe that they were both very thigh together and that they were convincing teenagers despite the eight years that separates the elder from the youngest. Neve Campbell did good in her first feature film in Hollywood as the shy Bonnie, a character which suits Campbell like a glove since I rarely have seen her playing a fierce, determined woman or a crazy with such convincing talent. It's a shame that we haven't seen a lot of Robin Tunney and/or Rachel True in theaters or commercial films afterwards. But I do remember Tunney's turn in the disappointing End of Days with Gabriel Byrne and Arnold Scharz… Hum, he's five times mister universe and the terminator you know who I'm talking about. Back to Tunney, I thought she played a commendable version of the Heroine à la Bella from Twilight (I will endure comparison but I hated the first film and couldn't bare watching the sequels.) And last but not least, there's Fairuza Balk, in the role of Nancy Downs. She looks way shorter than the others but never let it show throughout the film. She even manages to carry it on her shoulders for the most part, portraying a sometimes candid, other times unstable leader. And if she goes as far as to make some parts a caricature. She also bursts through the screen and that kind of performance in that particular flick is more than welcome in my opinion. She takes a lot of space that she's granted with from the crew I'm sure. The problem is that she may have made that particular character way bigger than she'll ever be in real life. (This is The Joker vs Batman when the Prince of crime is involved in an episode against the dark knight and never the other way around after all). If this is far from my favorite performance of hers, this is surely one to watch.But going deeper than the casting alone, THE CRAFT shows thousands of flaws. Because the writer(s) may have wanted to make it a cool fiction about witchcraft, without turning it into a joke, one thing must be hard to do when you are writing a story for teenagers, involving teenagers and you want to see it granted a PG13. That it managed to get itself an R rate is beyond me. Let alone the subject. There are a couple curse words here and there but that's about it. Let's get back to the serious(?) of the thing shall we? It seems Fairuza Balk was really into Gothic and Wicca at the time, she even did a lot of research about it in order to perfect her part. Still, she ironically plays the character that ended up with the most ridiculous holes in development. How come she has the means to go to private school and own the uniform if she's as poor as the poorest people alive in the first place? Still, who cares for character development for this one. I had a lot of fun. Another brain freeze is a scene involving the four ladies and sea animals. That scene was so irritating; I wonder how they decided to keep that instead of one of the few cheesy bits that we can see as cut scenes on the DVD's extras.But, if only for the fact that it might have given girls of my time a little or too much confidence sometimes and if only for the fact that the lovely Fairuza Balk ended up with all the best lines and shots. She often sports demonstrative and crazy eyes, yet there are also great close ups of those piercing blue gems of hers. And for a use of CG that was kept to a minimum, exploiting special effects in a subtle, yet intriguing way, never turning the scenes into the ridiculousness that it could have been if it ended up looking like an annoying cartoon, I think it deserves one viewing.And with the amount of talks about a remake, I don't know. Yes, I'd just forget about it. But can they still make this one better? Despite how much I like it, I think yes. But boy, I don't want to see forgettable names such as Kristen Stewart and Rooney Mara in the lead roles! And if they happen to find an actress as great to look creepy and as crazy as Fairuza can act, I'd say why not? Go for it.

This predictable teen horror was made literally just before the genre became hot again with the success of SCREAM. While refreshingly free of clichéd scenes of a masked killer murdering blondes, the film does have the typical teen characters, like the jocks, the obnoxious bimbos, and the typical "outsider" girls who in this case happen to practise witchcraft. My biggest complaint with this film is the trivialising of witchcraft; the witches simply use it to cast a few love spells and cure a scar or two. It's not very grand or partially enthralling, which is (in my mind) how a witchcraft film should be. It's also not in the least bit scary.The film does try and at least there are a few interesting ideas to salvage it and make it a watchable, if forgettable, experience. The central idea about power and how it corrupts people is a good, solid one but here it is taken to laughable extremes - as initially friendly girl Fairuza Balk (who incidentally had an early experience with witchcraft, playing the Worst Witch in an '80s children's TV series) becomes a psychotic killer. Things come down to a battle between her and nice girl Robin Tunney (who also appeared in the much more entertaining END OF DAYS), here sporting a silly-looking blonde wig.Most of the other characters are either shallow or one-dimensional, including the two supporting actresses, Neve Campbell and Rachel True. Neither are given much material to work with and they seem to change from being evil to good and back when the script calls for it. Although it is nice to see the annoying Campbell back before she became famous. The acting is good enough, I suppose, but most of the characters are irritating and unlikeable, apart from good-as-gold Tunney who just doesn't ring true anyway. There's a sad lack of adult actors in what is an entirely teen-centred film, at least with SCREAM we have the saving grace of Henry Winkler in a supporting role. Skeet Ulrich is good value as always but he's not enough to make this a worthwhile experience.The special effects, including lots of creepy crawlies and some magic storms, etc. are fine enough but there's nothing outstanding that stays in the mind. The movie can hardly be called "horror" either seeing as the horror/gore content is extremely low, it's rather a teen movie which just happens to be about witches. THE CRAFT will probably appeal to teenagers but not a lot of other people - unless you like looking at pretty girls made up as goths and weirdos. Otherwise, it's an empty and shallow experience.

Arriving at a new school, a teen meets up with a group of social outcasts who offer her entrance into their coven of witches, and after they grow stronger the power-mad coven are soon inciting retribution against their classmates as she tries to put an end to their reign of terror.There isn't much to the film. One of its' better features is the fact that this follows a lot of the real witch's spells and ceremonies which gives it a touch of realism as the chanting and special spells are quite realistic that allows for a touch of believability for many of those scenes. The many different spells, both good and evil are what really keep the film afloat since they start harmless and soon start affecting others. From the simple and harmless ramifications of their easier spells to the later ones that actually focus on supernatural powers are all fun to witness and believably done. The big action scene here, the final confrontation with the coven-members inside a large mansion, is quite entertaining and does offer up some big excitement along with the extraordinarily creepy sequence where almost everything in the house is covered with thousands of snakes or insects that must be crossed before heading to the final destination, is creepy, ingenious and really comes the closest to out-and-out horror. Otherwise, that's all that pretty much all that work for the film as there really isn't a whole lot to it. The only real flaw the film has is that it's really hard to feel threatened by the witches. Most of the spells are pretty much nonthreatening to others, and by removing the fact that they never really harm anyone physically, even at the end, it's really hard to feel fear of them. As the spells themselves aren't dangerous or evil, even the really dangerous ones that are performed do nothing harmful to others even when they're trying, and it makes it really hard to feel threatened by these. That becomes even worse since it spends all it's time on them, and therefore the opportunities are never there to feel that there's much to be feared of in here as simple avoidance makes for a more satisfying hindrance to their plans. It makes it really hard to supposedly be scared of witches seeking revenge when the most dangerous thing that they do is cause a person's hair to fall out. It's a big problem, and the main one in the film.Rated R: Graphic Language, Violence and attempted Rape.