The Craft: Legacy

It's great to see a mainstream teen movie with a diverse quartet of leads but, unfortunately, none of the new generation of witches in Zoe Lister-Jones' 'The Craft: Legacy' are as interesting as in the original, cult favorite 'The Craft' (Andrew Fleming, 1996). The story is thin and rushed - with half-baked social commentaries about being yourself, toxic masculinity, and girl power, the characters are underdeveloped and lifeless, and most of the acting is either amateurish or downright bad. Lousy.

I was excited for the movie and was glad it wasn't an exact copy of the original, but it was just flat. Honestly the last 10 seconds of the movie was the BEST part and if you watch it, you will know why. Some of the writing was just not relevant. I feel I know nothing about the main characters after watching it.

Granted, I did not have high hopes for "The Craft: Legacy" when it was initially announced, and I dreaded the outcome of it. And sure enough, the movie was a weak imitation of the original 1996 "The Craft" movie.

Writer and director Zoe Lister-Jones failed utterly to bring something worthwhile to the screen, as "The Craft: Legacy" just felt like a watered down more family-friendly version of the 1996 movie. And that was just an abysmal turn for the movie to take. Especially since the 1996 movie was pretty good and impacting back in the day.

I am sure that "The Craft: Legacy" was meant to be a continuation of the 1996 movie, but it just failed at being an original movie in its own right, and it had none of the charm, appeal or impact that the 1996 movie had.

Sure, if you haven't seen the 1996 "The Craft" then I suppose "The Craft: Legacy" is a good enough movie. But for us that did watch it, then "The Craft: Legacy" is lacking the magic, the foreboding darkness that threatened behind the alluring call of using witch magic. And more importantly, it was lacking memorable characters.

The character gallery in "The Craft: Legacy" felt like they were using cardboard stand-in, most of them fully devoid of backstory and personalities. Even David Duchovny's character felt like a puppet just brought in for the heck of it.

Not even having the likes of David Duchovny and Michelle Monaghan in the movie could do much to lift up what was essentially a hollow and shallow movie experience.

The most interesting part about "The Craft: Legacy" was the person that showed up in the end of the movie, and get this, was present for a whole staggering 3 second or so! Now, I am not going to say whom it is, but yeah, you guessed it already, because it was that predictable.

My rating of "The Craft: Legacy" lands on a less than mediocre four out of ten stars. The movie was watchable, for sure, but this was by no means a worthy runner up to the 1996 "The Craft".

I do really like the original but I never grew up with it so I don't have that connection with it like some other people. That being said this film was still not great.

I did actually enjoy some parts especially when the group were kind of just hanging out together and being fun.

There are so many dead end plots that just go absolutely no where like just nothing happens. For example there is this random scene where someone sleep walks into the main girls room, it is played as a jump scare. And then we never hear of it again. It was pointless and an absolute waste of time. This is just one thing, there are many other things like this. This is a stab in the dark but when watching I realised a few scenes from the trailer were absent from the movie and I feel like this is maybe why so many sub plots are just dead in the water because they are all on the cutting room floor.

I found that the ending seemed tacked on too and was just super unnecessary and then even more so the scenes that take place after the climax of the movie. They once again just felt like "oh here is an idea...actually never mind".

I think this movie would have been so much better if they just focused on the group and didn't bog it down with everything else. I also didn't like that they were just like had powers from the start there was no build up like in the original and no scenes where they had to practice them.

I really liked that it was a pretty inclusive movie and had a inclusive feeling running though the middle of it.

One small nit pick as well is that I really didn't like the soundtrack and score. It was such a hodge podge and didn't do the movie any favours. The original movie is such a time capsule of a time and culture in the 90s and this was just like all over the place.

What a misfire this movie was. The plot made zero sense, the new characters were entirely without nuance or development, and the visual effects looked like a bad Instagram filter.

It felt like the writer was so concerned with making the central cast come across as perfectly moralistic do-gooders, that they forgot they where writing teenagers. When a male (Timmy) is the most interesting and fleshed out character in a Craft sequel, you've done something horribly wrong.

You'll see quite a few moments in the trailer that never showed up in the actual film, which leads me to think that the heavy hand of an editor was involved in this one. I knew this movie was seriously in trouble when the central conflict wasn't even introduced until the last twenty minutes.

This feels like the Nickelodeon version of The Craft, with all of the original film's edges systematically filed down to smooth nubs that won't injure anyone if they accidentally bump up against it.