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The Craft
(directed by Andrew Fleming, 1996)
I never saw this movie until just now.
NOW I KNOW WHY.
I always had a suspicion for some reason that this movie wouldn't be any good.
MY SUSPICION HAS JUST BEEN CONFIRMED.
Now... you know me. I can watch ALL KINDS of movies and not find much fault with them.
Even this movie -- THE CRAP -- has some pros. I watched the whole thing, for starters. I wanted to turn it off, but I couldn't. I stayed, until the end, because I got hooked. I wanted to find out what happened. I wanted to see more. I wanted to see what these witches would do.
But The Craft is godawful.
It just is.
Worst movie ever? No. But remarkable to me in its badness. One of those movies I can now confidently call and consider a bad film. If we did redid the '90s Countdown, even Sexy Hitler would understand if this film didn't make it.
This movie is about four witches at some kind of Catholic high school in California. One of them, Sarah (Robin Tunney), is new. She's always known she had magical powers, but thanks to a clan of three ugly witches (Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell and Rachel True), she learns more about her powers and what she can do with them. Skeet Ulrich plays a guy at her school who makes up some dirty rumors about Sarah. She puts a love spell on him that makes him follow her around everywhere. Fairuza Balk, the meanest witch, lives with trailer trash parents. The girls use their powers to help her get out of that situation by having her stepdad drop dead, leaving her and her mother some insurance money which gets them an upscale apartment to live in. Rachel True, who is black, is constantly being harassed by a racist Christine Taylor (Marcia from the '90s Brady Bunch movies.) She makes Marcia Marcia Marcia's hair fall out. Neve Campbell is horribly scarred all over her back -- Sarah's powers help make all the disfiguring scars totally disappear!
When Fairuza Balk goes berserk and starts using her powers for evil, Sarah eventually must turn to a good witch at a witch's bookstore for help. All in the last act of the movie, that is. Most of the movie is fixated on the girls experimenting with their powers, little by little. Or we're treated to scenes of Neve Campbell in a doctor's office getting needles jabbed in her back as she undergoes some kind of genetic treatment to fix all the ugly, horrifying scars on her back.
The film is a great big mess. Horribly written, horribly plotted, and the witches themselves -- except for Robin Tunney -- are nails on a chalkboard bad. No wonder they used to burn witches.
What was the point of this thing? Except for Robin Tunney's character, everyone else was totally trashed by the end of the film, making The Craft seem worthless and meaningless. It's a lonely movie about a girl who starts at a new school and makes some sh!tty friends, has sh!tty experiences and then ends up leaving with nothing really great to say about it. There's even a ludicrous ending in which -- I'm going to give it away -- Fairuza Balk ends up locked in some kind of mental hospital, restrained to a bed! The movie was totally addicted to pain and insanity. It's a movie for depressed girls who cut themselves and go bulimic and go nuts until their mom and dad puts them in a mental ward for a week.
OH MY GOD -- IT WAS WRITTEN BY THE WRITER OF "FLATLINERS"!
*GASP*
And I love that movie.
I thought Neve Campbell would make this thing at least reasonably good to watch since I love her in the Scream movies -- and this movie has Skeet Ulrich who played Billy in the first Scream! But she was just... mousy and strange and forgettable, except for her bizarre medical procedures, which looked like a rape scene. The movie seems to have a subtext going on that I thought dealt with teenage girls coming to terms with teenage boys and what they want from them... but I don't know if it got resolved or handled exactly right. It seems to be rather anti-male and this feels like it may even be a lesbian movie, under the surface. There's even a scene where the girls kiss each other during a nature ritual. It even has roots with Disney cartoons -- Robin Tunney's (Sarah) mother is DEAD! She died giving birth to Sarah.
I remember, in the '90s, going to school with kids who were into witchcraft, Wicca, whatever. I even thought the stuff was fascinating -- casting spells and having power over stuff would be a bonus to life, not a minus.
Thank God I didn't expose myself to The Craft back then. It's possible I could have liked it back then... and God knows where I could have gone from there. Maybe I'd be in that mental institution like Fairuza Balk.
Okay, can I just say that I HATE writing movie reviews in the new Movie Forums layout? Yoda needs to do something to fix some of the issues I'm having... any witches out there wanna cast a spell on him?
I HATE the new popcorn boxes, too, so I have a new system for rating movies.
I give The Crap....
3 out of 10.
(directed by Andrew Fleming, 1996)
I never saw this movie until just now.
NOW I KNOW WHY.
I always had a suspicion for some reason that this movie wouldn't be any good.
MY SUSPICION HAS JUST BEEN CONFIRMED.
Now... you know me. I can watch ALL KINDS of movies and not find much fault with them.
Even this movie -- THE CRAP -- has some pros. I watched the whole thing, for starters. I wanted to turn it off, but I couldn't. I stayed, until the end, because I got hooked. I wanted to find out what happened. I wanted to see more. I wanted to see what these witches would do.
But The Craft is godawful.
It just is.
Worst movie ever? No. But remarkable to me in its badness. One of those movies I can now confidently call and consider a bad film. If we did redid the '90s Countdown, even Sexy Hitler would understand if this film didn't make it.
This movie is about four witches at some kind of Catholic high school in California. One of them, Sarah (Robin Tunney), is new. She's always known she had magical powers, but thanks to a clan of three ugly witches (Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell and Rachel True), she learns more about her powers and what she can do with them. Skeet Ulrich plays a guy at her school who makes up some dirty rumors about Sarah. She puts a love spell on him that makes him follow her around everywhere. Fairuza Balk, the meanest witch, lives with trailer trash parents. The girls use their powers to help her get out of that situation by having her stepdad drop dead, leaving her and her mother some insurance money which gets them an upscale apartment to live in. Rachel True, who is black, is constantly being harassed by a racist Christine Taylor (Marcia from the '90s Brady Bunch movies.) She makes Marcia Marcia Marcia's hair fall out. Neve Campbell is horribly scarred all over her back -- Sarah's powers help make all the disfiguring scars totally disappear!
When Fairuza Balk goes berserk and starts using her powers for evil, Sarah eventually must turn to a good witch at a witch's bookstore for help. All in the last act of the movie, that is. Most of the movie is fixated on the girls experimenting with their powers, little by little. Or we're treated to scenes of Neve Campbell in a doctor's office getting needles jabbed in her back as she undergoes some kind of genetic treatment to fix all the ugly, horrifying scars on her back.
The film is a great big mess. Horribly written, horribly plotted, and the witches themselves -- except for Robin Tunney -- are nails on a chalkboard bad. No wonder they used to burn witches.
What was the point of this thing? Except for Robin Tunney's character, everyone else was totally trashed by the end of the film, making The Craft seem worthless and meaningless. It's a lonely movie about a girl who starts at a new school and makes some sh!tty friends, has sh!tty experiences and then ends up leaving with nothing really great to say about it. There's even a ludicrous ending in which -- I'm going to give it away -- Fairuza Balk ends up locked in some kind of mental hospital, restrained to a bed! The movie was totally addicted to pain and insanity. It's a movie for depressed girls who cut themselves and go bulimic and go nuts until their mom and dad puts them in a mental ward for a week.
OH MY GOD -- IT WAS WRITTEN BY THE WRITER OF "FLATLINERS"!
*GASP*
And I love that movie.
I thought Neve Campbell would make this thing at least reasonably good to watch since I love her in the Scream movies -- and this movie has Skeet Ulrich who played Billy in the first Scream! But she was just... mousy and strange and forgettable, except for her bizarre medical procedures, which looked like a rape scene. The movie seems to have a subtext going on that I thought dealt with teenage girls coming to terms with teenage boys and what they want from them... but I don't know if it got resolved or handled exactly right. It seems to be rather anti-male and this feels like it may even be a lesbian movie, under the surface. There's even a scene where the girls kiss each other during a nature ritual. It even has roots with Disney cartoons -- Robin Tunney's (Sarah) mother is DEAD! She died giving birth to Sarah.
I remember, in the '90s, going to school with kids who were into witchcraft, Wicca, whatever. I even thought the stuff was fascinating -- casting spells and having power over stuff would be a bonus to life, not a minus.
Thank God I didn't expose myself to The Craft back then. It's possible I could have liked it back then... and God knows where I could have gone from there. Maybe I'd be in that mental institution like Fairuza Balk.
Okay, can I just say that I HATE writing movie reviews in the new Movie Forums layout? Yoda needs to do something to fix some of the issues I'm having... any witches out there wanna cast a spell on him?
I HATE the new popcorn boxes, too, so I have a new system for rating movies.
I give The Crap....
3 out of 10.