Mark Reviews Movies: THE CRAFT: LEGACY

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 27, 2020

Writer/director Zoe Lister-Jones eventually lands upon a clever premise for The Craft: Legacy, a reboot of/sequel to the 1996 movie about a coven of teenaged witches who use their powers for love, healing, and revenge. Here, the goal of the witches is even more limited: They want to transform a popular bully into the best, most politically awakened version of himself. The witches do that, apparently, to see if their magic works, and once it does, they almost seem to forget that they have supernatural abilities.

Lister-Jones doesn't quite know what to do with this material. She obviously doesn't want to make yet another reboot/sequel that's merely a rehash of its predecessor. The movie avoids that, for sure, even if the story feels pretty familiar from the start.

We meet a trio of teenage girls—Frankie (Gideon Adlon), Tabby (Lovie Simone), and Lourdes (Zoey Luna)—who desperately want to wield magic. They need a fourth for their group, though, for the magic to work.

Enter Lily (Cailee Spaeny), a newcomer to this quiet suburban town, who arrives with her mother (played by Michelle Monaghan). The two are moving in with mom's boyfriend (played by David Duchovny) and his three sons. On her first day at her new school, Lily suffers an embarrassing leak (to put it politely) to much mocking, led by Timmy (Nicholas Galitznie). The three aspiring witches offer their support and friendship, and after learning that Lily can hear their telepathic communications, they offer her a chance to become the group's fourth in their amateur witchcraft.

There's a bit more fun and enjoyment to these characters' discovery of their magical powers, for example, because these teenage girls have it comparatively easier than the characters from the original. None of them are really bullied. None of them have too much trouble in their lives at home. None of them are disfigured or mentally unstable. They're all pretty normal and content, so when the group discovers that they can communicate telepathically and freeze time and transform a cruel boy into a considerate and thoughtful young man, they revel, innocently and with delight, in that power.

On the other hand, one wonders where the conflict exists in this tale. It's pretty much non-existent as soon as the bully's bad attitude is vanquished (They create a potion, using some of his intimate material—again, to put it politely—and other things, to accomplish this). It's an amusing gag, watching this supposedly tough guy become an overnight expert on social and cultural politics, but the question still remains: Where can this story go from there?

To be honest, it really doesn't go anywhere until the third act, when the long-running suggestion of a bigger threat finally becomes apparent. The thought behind Lister-Jones' approach—to give us an idea of these characters grappling with assorted issues—is admirable, but the problem, perhaps, is that we only get a broad awareness of a few of these problems.

There's Lily, who has to deal with a future stepfather whose parenting philosophy is a bit harsher than her mother's. There's also Timmy, who eventually reveals to the quartet of his new friends that he's dealing with his sexuality, specifically how society pigeonholes people into one thing or another (A little is made of Lourdes being transgender, but the point ends with the mere fact of it, as everyone, quite commendably, accepts her). As for the other characters, they surely exist in this story, although any attempt to confront or even identify their problems is completely forgotten. Indeed, the importance of everyone in the coven except Lily more or less disappears until a climactic showdown.

We have to wait that long, really, for the true conflict of Lister-Jones' screenplay to emerge. Hints of it—something to do with a support group for men, championing the concept of the "hallowed masculine"—are tossed into the story here and there. While the conceit of the premise is kind of ingenious in its simplicity (basically, that there's a male equivalent to the magic of witches, with a rather dominating and misogynistic agenda and philosophy behind it), the conflict ends almost as soon as it's introduced, with a rather hasty battle in which the witches get to show off all of their tricks.

Save for the initial setup and a last-second cameo, The Craft: Legacy does set out to do something different than its predecessor. At the end, though, we're left wondering if the movie has done much of anything at all.

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