The Craft: Legacy

This was a film I was mildly excited for mainly because I liked the concept of a film exploring witchcraft. I also found out this is a sequel to the 1996 film so I watched that before I saw this one. I liked it but felt the story was unfocused and rushed and the characterisations were also very rushed at times. But this film makes the first film look like an all time classic.

Let's just get the positives out the way first and I really liked the lead actress who played Lily in this film. She's a very good capable actress who I'd like to see do more in the future. And it's always nice to see Michelle Monaghan in a film nowadays.

Now that's over with, let's get on with the negatives and wow this film is a mess. This is one of those times where I would love to watch the behind the scenes meetings to see what was going through the creative teams minds because this is a film that felt like it had too many visions centering on one story.

Without question, the biggest fault with this film is the marketing. The marketing was horrible for this film. First off, it's seems weird that a sequel to a 90s horror wasn't covered more. There was no official announcement (at least not to my knowledge) that the film was happening, barely any trailers and marketing posters. But what's also weird is the trailers marketed this film as a horror and when you watch the film, you do not get horror vibes at all.

Which brings me to my next problem. This films storytelling and tone is all a mess. This felt like a 10 episode Disney channel series squished into around an hour and 40 minutes. This film shifts between the genres of coming of age, to campy melodrama to even a bit of romcom inserted into it and never once does it feel like a horror film. In fact, this is the time I've seen a horror film and the horror elements feel out of place. This film feels like each scene was directed by different people.

And storytelling wise, if I criticised the first film for being a bit rushed, this film just accelerates through the plot. It literally montages through what feels like an hour of plot and character development which stops you from connecting with the main characters.

Onto some smaller details now, the characters are really forgettable or annoying. Like three male characters were introduced at the same time and once the next scene came on, I forgot what they looked like and I even got one of them mixed up with someone else.

There's other times as well where this film can be a little confusing with the spell casts. There's times where the witches cast spells in their minds instead of chanting them and you just don't realize it. There's one scene where one of the characters performs a love spell but watching the scene, it looks like she's pleasuring herself.

Finally, there's just some really distasteful ideas such as a masculinity cult and performing a love spell on a bisexual character where he's in love with another man. I am shocked that idea was even greenlit by the studio.

Overall this really is an appalling attempt as a horror film and I could spend hours just talking about bad this film is. It's officially in my bottom 5 of this entire year.

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