The Craft

The young actresses are superb, and they make an appealing, believable group of friends. Read full review

With its sense of what can be accomplished on a small budget, The Craft suggests the classic B-horrors of the '40s particularly The Cat People and The Seventh Victim. Read full review

The Craft casts a spell with a cast of four kicky young actresses, atmospheric California settings, cool special effects and the attitude of a music video. [03 May 1996]

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. Read full review

The Craft is well-made with a hard-driving pace. It places heavy demands on its four lead actresses, who come through in impressive fashion. Director and co-writer Andrew Fleming makes sure he and his stars deliver the goods. [03 May 1996, p.F16]

The Craft should please teenage girls at malls everywhere. But the film ends up descending into moralizing blahness. Most of the special effects are routine (the girls levitate like Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice), though there is one memorable bit: a nightmare featuring enough snakes, bugs, and slithery maggots to make Indiana Jones go gulp. Read full review

It's Teen Witch for the Nineties: dark, brooding, dangerous, and, come to think of it, a lot like high school. Read full review

Carrie meets Clueless, with a few good campy moments, some attractive cinematography, and an entertainingly lurid performance by Fairuza Balk, whose mascara, lipstick and spikey dog collar give the movie a decidedly Vicious (Sid, that is) twist. [03 May 1996, p.52]

The cast is proficient, with Balk especially adroit at giving her demonic gifts a gleeful twist. And director Andrew Fleming keeps the special effects on a low boil, effective yet not ostentatious, while taking allusive advantage of the competing (and sometimes complementing) tension between the school's Catholic imagery and the girl's pagan icons. But as our heroines lose their grip, so does he. [03 May 1996]

The feminist subtext here is intentional -- the credits list a Wiccan priestess as witchcraft consultant! -- but any subtlety soon gets lost in the thud and blunder of special effects, trendy music and a predictable Hollywood-style climax. Read full review

Four gifted and attractive actresses struggle hard to lend a semblance of dramatic coherence to The Craft, a neatly crafted film that begins most promisingly as a black comedy a la Heathers, but gradually succumbs to its tricky machinery of special effects. Still, young audiences, particularly women, are likely to connect with this energetic high-school tale about the vengeful empowerment of rebellious misfits. Read full review

With suitable suspension of disbelief this makes for agreeable enough nonsense. Read full review

The movie’s failure is one of imagination. It tilts too far in the direction of horror and special effects, when it might have been more fun to make a satirical comedy about punk teenagers. Read full review

There are some fine set-pieces, including a magical release of butterflies and a disturbing dream sequence, but the end opts disappointingly for standard horror-house effects. Read full review

Ultimately there's more guilt than pleasure to be found in The Craft. [03 May 1996]

Despite all their toil and trouble, the tale leaves us more bothered than bewitched. Read full review

Despite heroic efforts of four promising young actresses in the starring roles and a nifty premise, the movie is a mess: so incoherently plotted that dramatic tension doesn't have a chance to build. Read full review

Instead of becoming bewitched, we're caught up in one more gallery of cliches and storytelling blunders. The Glitches of Eastwick. [03 May 1996, p.C2]

If Fleming had played everything as a black comedy with a satirical send-up of high school life - like Heathers - he might have had something. But The Craft has no consistency and certainly no art as it drifts into an unprepossessing display of special-effects magic. [03 May 1996, p.08]

This tale of teenage witches run amok is silly, juvenile stuff, and it doesn't even have the decency to stick to its own ridiculous logic. [03 May 1996, p.6G]