The Craft Movie Trailer. Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. That cautionary cliche is reiterated with such bludgeoning insistency in “The Craft,” an entertainingly cheesy thriller about a coven of teen-age witches, that the movie ends up turning against itself.
Halfway into what starts out as a celebration of adolescent nonconformity and female independence, “The Craft” reverses its attitude and makes the spells cast by its four teen-age witches come back to haunt them. In its final half hour, the movie preaches a heavy-handed sermon about karma and the awful things that can happen to bad girls who dare to vent their evil thoughts.
Until it turns prim, this teen-age allegory, spun from a genre inaugurated 20 years ago by “Carrie,” perks along nicely. When Sarah (Robin Tunney), a beautiful but sullen teen-ager enters a parochial high school in the Los Angeles suburbs, she is recruited as the fourth member of a coven whose three founding members are nicknamed “the bitches of Eastwick” by their hostile classmates.
Nancy (Fairuza Balk), the group leader, is a promiscuous daredevil who lives in a shack with her drunken mother and abusive stepfather. Bonnie (Neve Campbell) is traumatized by burn scars that cover half her back. Rochelle (Rachel True), who is black, stings from racial insults hurled by blond, snooty Laura (Christine Taylor), the most popular girl in school.
Sarah, having inherited her occult talents from a mother who died while giving birth to her, turns out to be the quartet’s psychic linchpin and resident sage. With her added clout, the coven masters the arts of levitation and something called “the glamour effect,” which enables them to morph illusory hair extensions and other cosmetic wonders onto their bodies.
At first, revenge is sweet. Sarah makes Chris (Skeet Ulrich), the high school Don Juan who ruined her reputation, fall in love with her. Nancy rids herself of her evil stepfather and with the insurance money moves with her mother into a glitzy apartment whose centerpiece is a jukebox stacked with Connie Francis records. Bonnie cures her skin condition, and Rochelle makes Laura’s hair fall out.
But in the karmic universe of “The Craft,” supernatural powers come with a stiff price, especially when they are used to destroy others. When Sarah advises restraint and forgiveness, her fellow witches, carried away with their abilities, turn against her. It isn’t long before Sarah finds herself wading in snakes and bugs as she tries to fight off her former friends’ destructive magic.
All things considered, “The Craft,” directed by Andrew Fleming from a screenplay by Peter Filardi and Mr. Fleming, is a surprisingly skittish fable of adolescent powerlessness, grandiosity and the nursing of psychic wounds. As the witchcraft escalates, the movie exchanges its psychological acuity for garish special effects that hammer home a ponderous warning to once and future witches: be good or else.
The Craft (1996)
Directed by: Andrew Fleming
Starring: Fairuza Balk, Robin Tunney, Neve Campbell, Rachel True, Skeet Ulrich, Christine Taylor, Breckin Meyer, Nathaniel Marston, Assumpta Serna, Helen Shaver, Jeanine Jackson, Brenda Strong
Screenplay by: Andrew Fleming, Peter Filardi
Production Design by: Marek Dobrowolski
Cinematography by: Alexander Gruszynski
Film Editing by: Jeff Freeman
Costume Design by: Deborah Everton
Set Decoration by: Nancy Nye
Art Direction by: Gae S. Buckley
Music by: Graeme Revell
MPAA Rating: R for some terror and violence, and for brief language.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: May 3, 1996
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