The Craft: Legacy

Disappointment that it didn't live up to the first film. At least first film was edgy, a little scary, even had goths.

Yes, it's a subpar sequel, but not nearly as bad as many people make it out to be. I get it, the movie errs on the side of being too preachy and "woke", which is something that was likely to get a lot of criticism, especially considering that this flick was bound to attract a lot of attention from fans of the first movie (mostly people in their mid to late thirties, like myself). Drawing a comparison is somewhat inevitable, given that "The Craft" (1996) is widely regarded as a cult flick, but, as a standalone movie, "Legacy" works in its own way and, while I can understand why so many people were dissatisfied with it, I would say that it doesn't deserve all these 1/10 scores that it got on IMDb or other websites. This sequel is mostly aimed at a younger audience with a more social justice warrior mindset, for the lack of a more fitting description. While I pretty much tend to roll my eyes at any kind of patchiness, I didn't find it impossible to sit through this flick, like I experienced with other "woke" movies.

While in the original film we get a group of girls who were mostly miserable and dark, because of their inner conflicts and the fact that they were mostly ostracized by their peers, "Legacy" gives us four girls who are pretty much sparkly and happy. Actually, I would say that, at some point, I found them annoyingly loud and enthusiastic, especially about their magic, which they mostly use to play silly tricks and whatnot. While the 1996 film dwells into the lives of each of the four girls, allowing us to know them and empathize with them, "Legacy" mostly focuses on Lily, the main character. As a matter of fact, the other girls' lives are never even explored, which is something that bothered me a lot, because it felt alienating and rushed. Who are "the three others"? Lourdes, a transgender latina; Tabby, who we never really get to know and Frankie, a ditzy and likeable girl who, at some point, receives a snarky comment from a popular girl, who makes fun...

Sigh... not that I expected anything that equaled the original The Craft even partially, this is an insult to decades of pre-woke era American culture.

Sensitivity and tolerance notwithstanding, this is thematically and aesthetically a major step down from the original film and urinates all over the legacy of that classic contribution to American cinema.

Most glaring from a visual standpoint is casting of the 4 leads, a double wide boy posing as a girl(!?), a girl who looks like a boy, a legitimately ugly girl, and (at least) a beautiful descendant of the kings and queens of Africa. Why, pray tell would they deviate from the original formulation of alluring and powerful imagery of 4 uniquely beautiful young women and give us THAT mess instead? Because beauty is more than skin deep? Because inner beauty is more important? Because everyone is beautiful? Not quite. Beauty is just beauty, and they decided to leave it out of this film for the most part.

Adding to the insult of this present day lesson in how to wokefy the sequel of a classic film, they decided to make every masculine character, evil. Great message.

Yikes, well there's not much point in gilding the lily - this is dreadful. A sort of elongated episode of "Buffy", written by someone who has little, if any, grasp of how to construct a suspenseful story and directed with the same level of skill. It reminded me of female equivalent of "The Covenant" (2006) and what David Duchovny is doing here is anyone's guess. In my view, it's well out of it's depth getting a cinema release at all - it's a pretty pointless exercise on just about every count that belongs on daytime teen television.