The Craft

Watched January 5, 2014

1996
Starring: Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Rachel True, Neve Campbell

After a suicide attempt, Sarah (Robin Tunney) moves with her dad and step-mom to LA. On her first day at her new Catholic high school, she meets Chris (Skeet Ulrich) one of the popular guys and she quickly develops a crush on him even though he's a sleazebag. She also meets trio of weird goth girls, Nancy (Fairuza Balk), Bonnie (Neve Campbell) and Rochelle (Rachel True). These girls are already practicing witches, but they need a fourth to make some of their spells really work. They try to attract Sarah after Bonnie sees her balance a pencil on the tip in French class. Nancy makes fun of Sarah as a way to makes friends with her, which is a terrible place to start. Sarah goes on a date with Chris, they only kiss, but the next day Chris tells everyone they had sex. Sarah is pissed at Chris and he is a jerk when she confronts him about it. We then jump cut to Sarah being good friends with Nancy, Bonnie and Rochelle, there seems to be a scene missing, but just go along for the ride. 

The trio introduce Sarah to their witchy ways, she is intrigued as she has been able to do little bits of magic her whole life. They keep trying out different spells as they all want different things to happen. Sarah still has a crush on Chris even though he's terrible, so she makes a love spell to make him obsessed with her. Bonnie's back in covered in scars from a fire when she was a kid and she wishes them away. Rochelle is on the swim team with racist Laura (Christine Taylor) and she just wants Laura to be kind to her. Nancy doesn't really reveal her desire, but we'll find out later what she wanted, mostly power though. 

The spell works on Chris, he becomes Sarah's puppy and he follows her everywhere. Bonnie's scars go away so she can wear low cut, sleeveless tops, even though the scars were mostly on her back in the first place. Laura continues to be terrible to Rochelle, so Laura's hair starts coming out in clumps. Nancy lives in a trailer with her mom and the mom's boyfriend who is abusive. One night the boyfriend is about the hit Nancy's mom when Nancy freaks out, causing the lights to go out, then the boyfriend has a heart attack. 

All the girls feel really confident in their new powers, except Sarah starts to get a little scared about what they're doing. They have another ceremony on the beach where Nancy summons the power of Manon and she walks on water. Sarah goes on another date with Chris, but is sick of him be obsessed with her so she tries to break if off. He then attempts to rape her but she escapes. Nancy is pissed about what Chris did and wants to get revenge. She also has some vague romantic history with him so some of her motive is personal. Nancy uses a spell to make herself look like Sarah, Chris buys it and they start making out. Sarah, Rochelle and Bonnie bust into the room where Chris and Nancy are humping on a bed, I'm not sure if we're supposed to assume they had sex as they both still have their clothes on. The spell breaks and Chris is horrified to find that he was making out with Nancy, she gets pissed and uses her powers to push him out the window. He falls down to the first floor and is killed. Sarah is really scared now and she tries to make a binding spell to stop Nancy from using her powers. The girls now descend on Sarah and throw tons of horrifying spells at her, Sarah is so scared she can't use her powers to fight back. She finally finds her strength and fights back, and binds Nancy from using evil powers. It ends with Bonnie and Rochelle apologizing to Sarah for trying to kill her but they ask if she still has any powers because they don't. Sarah makes a bunch of lighting hit a tree branch in front of them, showing she was the one with real powers. Nancy is left in a mental institution.

As a girl growing up in the '90s, I remember this movie coming out.  My best friend was pretty into Wicca, so we fit the bill perfectly for the target audience. I didn't actually see this movie until later possibly because it was rated R, but at the same time I was watching all sorts of other horror movies so who knows. Anyway we had been talking about watching it again for awhile. I still really like it, teen witch outcasts are people I can relate to. The special effects still hold up really well, even though Robin Tunney's wig is not the best.  A big standout for me was how strange Fairuza Balk's mouth seems, she just talks using all of it and it's big; her nutso performance as Nancy is great. It's often hard to find a good witch movie and I really enjoy this one a lot since it's mostly slumber parties and spells.