Growing up a teen in the very late 90’s, The Craft soon came my go-to movie about female empowerment and awesome style, and obviously, just like everyone else, I loved Fairuza Balk’s character Nancy Downs. Having said, it’s obvious that any sequel wouldn’t have done the original justice without the other witches from the first film, especially since Fairuza Balk’s reprisal of Nancy Downs only lasts a mere handful of seconds at the very end of the movie.

I like the protagonist Lily, but I’m not so enamoured by the rest of the coven who come across as watered-down Sabrina-esque witches than holding the true trauma, hardships, and pathos the witches Nancy, Bonnie, Sarah, and Rochelle from the first film. The biggest mistake is that we never got a chance to know much about the new coven or if they were facing any hardships or why they were outcasts. There was just no heart and honestly, that made caring about them less likely.

I was surprised to see that a women had directed the movie seeing that since Carrie came onscreen, many have used menstruation as a form of shame for teenage girls, and quite honestly I AM OVER IT. The first day of school has Lily unexpectedly bleed through her jeans (although honestly any woman with a vagina can assure you that Lily would’ve been the first to notice something was amiss before the students chuckled their mockery had her mishap). We need to stop correlating menstruation with shame, and it needs to stop being depicted as a source of bullying. For a movie that shoved woke soundbites every three seconds, you would’ve thought the director wouldn’t have gone into this tropey territory.

Whoever wrote the script must’ve seen Magnolia on repeat and then decide it’d be a good idea to reprise Tom Cruise’s character as a motivational speaker in the form of David Duchovny, and although I am a fan of Duchovny, his character raised more questions that left us wondering, how does he know about Manon, and did he steal Nancy’s powers from her? And since he seemed to target Lily specifically for her power, did he know who she was prior to him hooking up with her adopted mother? The movie didn’t explain any of this.

Instead, what we got was a witch movie that seemed less like The Craft and more like an episode of Charmed, injected with lots of 90’s trends mixed with Euphoria makeup moments. Honestly, the only good thing about the movie was them casting a trans actress to actually portray a trans girl. As a homage or sequel, the movie bombed, and as a standalone witch movie, the film barely delved into the rich history of paganism, witchcraft, or Wicca.

The Craft truly explored the perils of power and greed. Not to mention, accurately depicting the pain of being a real outcast and how deeply traumatizing it is to be betrayed by your close friends. The Craft: Legacy aspired to be so many things, but ultimately fell flat on its face. To put it simple, it was a mediocre film.

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