Review: ‘The Craft: Legacy’
The Craft: Legacy is a loving and respectful tribute to the 1996 original that boldly attempts to forge its own path to mixed results.
Fans of Andrew Fleming’s 1996 cult classic The Craft will be happy to know that Zoe Lister-Jones’ sequel, titled The Craft: Legacy, is not the derivative cash grab many anticipated it would be. Arriving 24 years after the original, which was met with a mixed critical response upon its release, The Craft: Legacy attempts to capture the spirit of the first film without treading familiar ground, instead exploring new themes and addressing topics that Fleming’s original steered far away from.
The Craft: Legacy centers on Lily (Cailee Spaeny), a teenage girl who reluctantly moves to a new town alongside her mother (Michelle Monaghan), her mother’s new boyfriend (David Duchovny) and his three sons. An embarrassing incident at school involving high school jock Timmy (Nicholas Galitzine) manages to place Lily on the radar of Frankie (Gideon Adlon), Tabby (Lovie Simone) and Lourdes (Zoey Luna), the resident outsiders who are also coincidentally searching for a fourth member for their coven. As Lily finds herself increasingly caught up in the coven and their politics, she soon realizes she may be in over her head, unwittingly placing herself and her mother in jeopardy in the process.
While The Craft managed to chart emotional journeys for each and every member of its coven, The Craft: Legacy is more of a one woman show, focusing almost entirely on Lily and her predicaments for the entirety of its runtime. Coming off of two exceptional performances in Drew Goddard’s Bad Times at the El Royale and Alex Garland’s Devs, Cailee Spaeny is more than capable of carrying the movie, turning in an exceptional and surprisingly soulful performance as the lost and misguided Lily. She manages to perfectly capture every aspect of Lily’s arc, starting from her shy, anxious beginnings to the more confident and headstrong persona she adopts after her induction into the coven, all while ensuring audiences can sympathize with her throughout the duration of the film.
Lovie Simone and Zoey Luna manage to leave an impression as the cool Tabby and the bubbly Lourdes respectively, despite the lack of attention given to their characters. Simone, in particular, exudes star power and charisma, almost stealing the movie from the more reserved Spaeny. It’s a real shame that the film isn’t interested in further exploring their characters or even giving them any semblance of a character arc. One of the strengths of the first film was how it managed to explore its characters in a tangible way, giving each of them their own fears and insecurities. The Craft: Legacy, however, treats them as props instead, only there to further advance Lily’s story and act as an entry point for her journey into witchcraft.
While the first film descends into a bitter exploration of female rivalry, Lister-Jones admirably tackles the sequel from a different angle, presenting it as a study of female kinship instead; she manages to establish the coven’s caring nature from the get-go and portrays them as supportive figures to Lily through-and-through, resulting in a glaring lack of character arcs for Frankie, Tabby and Lourdes. When you establish your characters as perfect beacons of support from the get-go, you aren’t giving them any opportunities to or much room in which they can grow or change, leading to one-dimensional characterizations in the process. The film is also firmly cemented in our current times, using buzzwords and slang that will ring familiar to everyone who occupies any form of online space in 2020. Unfortunately, this will undoubtedly age the film and ensure its status as a product of its time instead of the timeless classic the first film is held up as today.
Up-and-coming actor Nicholas Galitzine is surprisingly the MVP of the film, delivering a haunting, searing performance as an emotionally stunted young man who only starts to loosen up after the witches place a hex on him to make him more in touch with his “sensitive side”. Timmy is very much a victim of toxic masculinity and his role in the film will lead to incredibly interesting conversations and comparisons, a stark and refreshing change from his equivalent in the first film (the one-dimensional Chris Hooker, played by Skeet Ulrich). Elsewhere, Michelle Monaghan is serviceable as Lily’s kind and supportive mother who isn’t given much to do in the film while David Duchovny manages to establish an intimidating presence as Lily’s strict new stepfather.
Overall, The Craft: Legacy is enjoyable if slightly messy and underbaked. It carries the same DNA of the 1996 classic while still boldly attempting to forge its own overly earnest path, one that may not be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s still incredibly admirable, though, that the team involved decided to do their own thing instead of serving audiences a rehash of the first film, which would have been much easier to do. The results may not be perfect, but neither is the first film – and that’s exactly part of its charm.
Rating: 3/5
The Craft: Legacy is out now on PVOD in the US, and in theaters in certain international territories.