The Craft

4.00
    The Craft
    1996

    Synopsis

    A Catholic school newcomer falls in with a clique of teen witches who wield their powers against all who dare to cross them -- be they teachers, rivals or meddlesome parents.

    Your Movie Library

    Cast

    • Robin TunneySarah Bailey
    • Fairuza BalkNancy Downs
    • Neve CampbellBonnie
    • Rachel TrueRochelle
    • Skeet UlrichChris Hooker
    • Christine TaylorLaura Lizzie
    • Breckin MeyerMitt
    • Nathaniel MarstonTrey
    • Cliff DeYoungMr. Bailey
    • Assumpta SernaLirio

    Recommendations

    • 75

      San Francisco Chronicle

      The young actresses are superb, and they make an appealing, believable group of friends.
    • 75

      New York Daily News

      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.
    • 70

      The New York Times

      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.
    • 67

      Entertainment Weekly

      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.
    • 67

      Austin Chronicle

      It's Teen Witch for the Nineties: dark, brooding, dangerous, and, come to think of it, a lot like high school.
    • 60

      TV Guide Magazine

      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.
    • 60

      Variety

      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.
    • 50

      Chicago Sun-Times

      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.

    Loved by

    Seen by

    Lists