The Craft hit theaters in 1996 to decent numbers and ultimately became a surprise hit at the box office, despite the mixed reviews from critics. Over the years it has since gained somewhat of a cult following, so it should come as no surprise that Hollywood has been wanting to do another film for years. In fact, talks of another installment has been floating around for well over a decade, but it wasn’t until Blumhouse got involved in 2019 that the project finally started to move.

While Hollywood hates using the term “remake” nowadays, “reboot” is still thrown around and that’s what it seemed like this would be. For clarification, a reboot is essentially a remake, but it acknowledges characters or events from its predecessor, making it seem more like a sequel. Even the trailer for this made it seem like it was basically a rehash of the first, but with a modern setting and a new set of girls.  

I’m not sure why it was marketed that way, because that’s not how the movie turned out and some of the footage from the trailer wasn’t even in the final cut. So, the question remains: is it good or even a worthy follow up to the original? Sadly, it’s a no in both accounts, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad film all together.  

Taking place several years after the first, the story focuses on a young mother (Michelle Monaghan) and her teenage daughter, Lily (Cailee Spaeny), as they move into the large home of the mom’s new romantic interest, played by an aged David Duchovny (who pretty much phones in his role). It’s not long before Lily befriends a small group of girls at school, who all claim to be “witches” looking for a fourth member. Now that their circle is complete, they can start doing magic and thanks to Lily being naturally gifted, it’s not long before they’re floating, stopping time, and applying hassle free eye glitter makeup...

Things take a turn when the girls get semi-serious and decide to make one of the male bullies from their school into a new “woke” female crusader, which I'm sure seemed like a good idea at the time. It's all fine and dandy until certain events occur that make the girls question their new found gifts. As exciting as all that sounds, the movie plays out pretty tame. In fact, aside from some swear words, you could easily premiere this on the Lifetime channel with very minimal edits, if any. Therein lies the problem—it simply doesn’t feel like a horror flick, let alone, a sequel to The Craft.  

There isn’t even any kind of conflict in the movie until the last twenty minutes when a painfully obvious twist is revealed. Even the standard conflict between the girls is incredibly tame and forgotten in no time. It would have been nice to see the girls push the boundaries a little and at least try to get a little dark. I mean, they can stop time and all they use it for is to walk around a bunch of frozen people at the school cafeteria; seriously? You’re gonna steal a poor kid’s frisbee mid-air and pretend to take selfies with a couple girls you don’t know?? That’s the best you can come up with!?

As it is, the movie isn’t entirely bad. Sure, the female characters are all pretty hollow except for the lead girl, but hey, at least the pacing’s decent, right? And they didn’t simply rehash everything from the first, aside from the theme of the new girl joining the group, it’s all pretty different and it actually does feel like a sequel. On that note, I did like how the story connects to the first. I mean, it’s an obvious connection, but it was still nice to see nonetheless.